 Good morning everyone. This is a joint hearing with the Vermont House Committee on Commerce and Economic Development and Vermont House General and Housing and Military Affairs Committee. We're here today to go over a report done by Joint Fiscal Office Joyce Manchester on the unemployment insurance and some issues during COVID that she's going to outline for us. So Joyce, good morning. Thank you for taking time to meet with us and we appreciate your work and are looking forward to what you have to tell us. Very good. Good morning to everyone. I'm happy to be here. I haven't met some of you except now virtually, so maybe that will change someday. For the record, I'm Joyce Manchester from the Joint Fiscal Office. So I've been tracking periodically the characteristics of people who are receiving unemployment insurance benefits in Vermont. So this comes from data from the United States, the US Department of Labor, and it's released to the lag. So today I'll be talking about data from November of 2020. But this is the most recent data that we have. Just for a brief reminder, the unemployment insurance system is the traditional system that you all have heard about over the years. It serves mainly people who have wage income and who have a history of employment. So you have to have worked for the last five quarters. You have to be employed by an employer and so forth and so on. So that's the population that I'll be talking about today. Unfortunately, we do not have similar data talking about characteristics of people on the brand new PUA program. That's the program that serves the sole firefighters, self-employed, and so on. So we don't know about those folks, but we do have lots of data on people who are getting the traditional or the regular, whatever you call it, unemployment insurance system. So I can give you some headlines and then we can delve more into the details and please speak up or stop me as we go through. I can't see everyone, but if you make some noise, I will be happy to answer questions. Okay, so here are three headlines. First off, for the week ending November 14th, 2020. So this survey happens during the week that contains the 12th of each month. So during the week ending November 14th, 2020, about 73% of people receiving traditional UI benefits in Vermont were women. So that's 7,500 people out of the 10,400 receiving UI benefits. We'll talk a lot more about that in just a minute. Second headline is that older Vermonters comprised greater shares of UI recipients than was true for the United States as a whole. So we have somewhat higher percentages of older Vermonters on UI. And thirdly, workers in the accommodations and food services sector made up 26% of UI recipients and the nationwide average was 15%. So that says we have a lot more people in Vermont who are employed in the hospitality sector. Could I just remind members to mute themselves, please? Thank you. Thanks. Right, so we shouldn't be too surprised that there are higher percentages in Vermont on accommodations and food services sector, but that's quite a big difference. And a quarter of the folks on UI are in that sector. So Amy, if you could share that issue brief on the screen where I'm going to refer. Did someone have a question? I'm happy to share it, Joyce. Do you want to share it so you can control it or do you want me to share it? So true confessions. I tried to share a document earlier this week and was unable to do so. Okay, no problem. So that'd be great. Joyce, I have a quick question. You said to jump in. Is that really okay, Mr. Chair? Please. Okay. This is Emma Mulvaney-Sannick from Burlington. Hi. I'm just curious why either Department of Labor or whoever collects the data on the self-employed numbers, why that we can't look at that data either yet or will we be able to at some point? So I don't know the answer to that question except that I do know that all folks who are dealing with unemployment insurance are overwhelmed these days. So this survey of regular UI beneficiaries has been in place for decades, years and years and years. And to start up a new survey of a new population would take considerable time and effort. So that's that's as much as I know. Okay. So let's, nope, I don't want the addendum. I want the issue brief that's dated January 6th. So it's the other document, please. Oh, okay. Just one sec. Thanks. Nope, that's still the addendum. Huh. I'm seeing the issue brief on my screen. So let me see. Maybe I've got the, how about that? Is that the right one? Nope. No. Okay. That's, those are the only two I have. This one says issue brief on my screen. Are you seeing something different? Yes. We're seeing the addendum. Is that it now? No. I'm not sure what's happening with my screen sharing. So this doesn't say issue brief. Well, now we're just seeing the list of documents from the committee website. That's what I'm seeing. Different screen. All right. Hang on just a second. I have two screens going. So I think that's the problem. Let me get back down here. Sorry, everybody. Usually this is a little more seamless. Is that the correct one? Yes. Very good. Yeah. Good. Thank you. Sure. Okay. Let's, let's scroll down to that figure at the bottom of the page. Do you want me to keep going past this? Yeah. I want to see the full figure. I'm seeing only a little top piece of it right now. Okay. There we go. Great. Perfect. Okay. So what you're looking at now is a figure that shows shares of recipients of UI benefits first by gender and then by age. So Vermont, of course, is in green. Those are the green bars and the US average is in light blue. So you can see that in November, we had a much smaller share of men receiving UI about 27% versus the national average of about 48%. And we had a much higher percentage of women receiving UI. So that's the 73% versus the average for the country at 50%. So that's the big difference that caught my eye. But then I looked also at age groups. And you can see that things are a little bit different in Vermont than at the national level. We have a little bit smaller percentages of younger people and pretty close in the middle ages. And then at the higher ages, you can see that Vermont has more people receiving UI as a proportion of the total than the US. And part of that comes about because we do have more older people in the state. And we also have a higher labor force participation rate in the state for people who are 55 and older and especially 65 and older. But as a result, we do have those higher proportions receiving UI benefits. Did someone have a question? Joyce, Representative Kalaki has a question. Sure. Thank you. The elder thing you answered for me. Joyce, how do you look at that data about the number of women? It's so startling. Yes. Do you posit? Have you thought about that? Absolutely. So the next 25 minutes will be spent on that. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Yes, we're going there. Okay. So let's move on to the second page of that issue brief, please. Okay. So you can stop right there. Good. Okay. So in the first paragraph here, I do talk about the fact that it's quite surprising to see such a large share of women. And I began to explore that issue in this issue brief. You can see that here I'm talking about the difference between this recession, the COVID-19 recession, and the Great Recession, which happened back in 2008, 2009, 2010. Back then, we had what was called the man's session because so many men were unemployed and receiving unemployment insurance benefits. Back then, the problem was that construction and the finance industry were really shut down. And so lots of those folks were losing jobs. And now, of course, we have a very different situation because of COVID-19 in which people are staying home. They're not traveling. They're not eating out. They're not shopping, et cetera, et cetera. And so the industries that are most hit are the hospitality industries, accommodations, food services, and perhaps retail. But in any event, those sectors where women are the majority of the employees. So that does begin to explain why women are such a big proportion. We also have the consideration that women often tend to be the caretakers, the caregivers, I should say, for both young children, school-age children, and also older adults. And during these months, many child care centers have been closed or operating limited hours. Schools are operating sometimes irregular hours, or they're all remote or whatever. It's often the woman in the household who needs to take care of the children. We have other women who are taking care of older adults who may be especially vulnerable to COVID-19. And finally, yes, sure. Representative Troiano has his hand up. Very good. I did take it down. Joyce, you just answered my inquiry that it was, it seems to me that women taking time off from work to supervise and educate their children at home must have had an impact on these numbers. Absolutely. Yes, indeed. Unfortunately, in the data, we can't tell why women were receiving unemployment insurance benefits, whether they lost a job because of their employer shutting down or whether they left their job because of children or older adults related to COVID-19. But we can certainly surmise that that would be a big part of the story. Okay, I talk a little bit about older workers, but I don't have a lot more to say about the older workers. Let's scroll down to the very bottom of the page so that we can see that table. So here's where I look at the shares of people on UI from their sectors, from their employer groups. And I find that in Vermont, 26% of people receiving UI benefits are from the accommodation and food services sector versus almost 15% in the US. We also have somewhat higher percentages in health care and social assistance and in educational services, but it's not that different. It's what, a point or two, a percentage point or two different. So it seems to be the accommodation and food services sector where we're very different from the rest of the country. Okay, I'll stop for a second there and see if there are questions. And then we can move on to the addendum, which has a little bit more information about cyclical trends in the male-female shares of UI recipients over time and also the sectors that contribute to UI recipients over time. Hey, Representative Kimball. Hey, Mr. Chair. Joyce, thank you very much for the presentation. Just a question on the pure math. If it's 26% of the UI recipients are in food and lodging, what percent of the employee base is in food and lodging? So it's 26% of the unemployed, but do we know how that stacks up? Yeah, I don't know that off my head. I have looked at those numbers before and I just can't tell you what they are, but I can find out. Thank you. Hey, Representative Mulvaney-Stanek. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thanks, Joyce. Just another data question, no surprise. I'm just curious because unemployment is only really the picture of people who, as I understand it, in the last week were seeking employment and, well, if you could maybe define that for me, because I'm curious about the underemployed, so the folks who are discouraged workers who aren't being counted, and how we can get a bigger, more accurate picture of, in this case, women in particular and BIPOC women in particular who are not working and yet aren't being counted in these figures. Right. So in normal times, you are correct that the unemployed and people who are eligible for unemployment insurance include only those who are actively looking for work. So it is still true that the official unemployment statistics look only at people who have actively looked for work in the past week. So Vermont's rate of, whatever it is now, 3.8% of their bounce is low because it looks only at people who have actively looked for work. Okay. However, the CARES Act, CARES 1 back in March, allowed states to waive the requirement that people be actively looking for work in order to receive unemployment insurance benefits. And Vermont chose to waive that requirement. So it is true that we have many people on the traditional UI roles and also on PUA roles who are not actively looking for work because of the COVID-19 pandemic. So A lot of noise. Turn. Okay. So let's see. If you're really interested in the difference between the numbers who are receiving UI insurance and the numbers who are counted in the unemployment statistics, I wrote an issue brief back in maybe October on that topic. So I can send that along. But I'm just making a note. Right. What we don't know is the number of people who are discouraged workers who are not receiving unemployment benefits and not looking for work, right? So they are officially out of the labor force. They're not counted among the unemployed. They're certainly not employed. They're just not in the labor force, right? So we do not have statistics on those. We know that the number of employed, so either actively looking, I'm sorry, either actively working or actively looking for work has decreased dramatically. That's meaning that the number out of the labor force has also increased dramatically, but we don't have information about who those folks are, unfortunately. And Joyce, do you have any other issue briefs that would give a snapshot of the number of women in the workforce, maybe if prior to the pandemic, just for another reference point, just to help fill in that gap? I'm a new legislator, so if these exist, just point me in the right direction and I'll head there. Right. So I don't think I've written an issue brief on that topic, although I can certainly show you where to find the data on the Vermont Department of Labor website. Yes. Okay. Representative Blumlee. Well, Emma actually asked one of the questions that I wanted to ask. I think that there have been a number of reports that have come out over the last two months that demonstrate that a lot of women have dropped out of the workforce altogether, which has a significant impact on, well, on individual families and on a state like Vermont that is so small and dependent upon trying to use every drop of talent that's available to us. And I am wondering, we may not have the data on those who have completely dropped out of the workforce, but I guess I am wondering if JFO and or commerce are exploring ways to better understand who has dropped out of the workforce in the state and prioritizing efforts that would focus on those workers. Right. So if we had the data, JFO would love to explore those issues more deeply. I do not know that there is data available to look at characteristics of people who are out of the labor force, except to think about women and men in the labor force prior to the pandemic and then women and men in the labor force after the pandemic and look at the difference. Right. So we could certainly do that. I think people at the Vermont Department of Labor are trying to analyze some data, but they are just so overwhelmed with keeping up with unemployment benefits that they have not a lot of time to do the analysis. So yeah, I am happy to look into the differences in the labor force over time. That would be a good thing to do. I also want to say that some women who have dropped out of the labor force are receiving unemployment insurance benefits. Right. So right now under those special rules, because Vermont waived the requirement that they be looking, they could be out of the labor force and still receiving unemployment insurance benefits. Now that provision, the allowance that says you do not have to be looking for work in order to receive UI benefits may end at some point. And we expect it to end sometime. Who knows when, but at the moment, it is certainly true that there are some out of the labor force who are receiving UI benefits and PUA benefits for that matter. Right. Representative Parsons. Thank you. My question was just in these numbers, is it calculated in the traditional unemployment benefit who has been denied? I am just curious if this trend of women in the workforce carries over to when people apply for the benefit, is it the same in the denial process? Right. So again, we don't have data on the denials. So these refer to benefits actually paid out. So these are recipients of UI benefits. Generally speaking, when I've been looking at the number of initial claims, as they call them, your first application is called an initial claims. When I look at the initial claims that roll over into benefits the next week, generally I see 90, 95% of those folks moving forward. So there are some denials, but they make up a relatively small part of the numbers. So I'm sorry, we don't have good data on denials. Representative Walts. Thank you, Chair, Mark. Joyce, I'm having a real hard time wrapping my head around some of these numbers and really wondering how PUA fits into this. Are some of the people who are being counted as unemployed? Could some of them be getting PUA benefits? I don't know how they fit. Yes. So let's see if I can give you some recent numbers about the shares of people on unemployment insurance. I have to find the right spreadsheet here. Here we go. Okay. So I have numbers from last week. So these numbers were just released yesterday. Oh, I'm sorry. I don't have the numbers for last week. I have numbers. Let's give you numbers on average for December. So in December, I have to do some quick averages in my head. Okay. In December, we had about 11,000, let's call it, let's call it 12,000 people receiving UI benefits in December. Those are traditional UI benefits. We also had, let's see, about 8,500 people receiving PUA benefits. Okay. So it's what, three quarters of the number? So those folks would stack on top of the UI recipients. So we have a total of about 20,000 people. Is that right? So what I'm trying to get my head around is how many people we have, but reporting is unemployed, but they're not getting any benefits whatsoever. I'm just not seeing a clear path to that. Exactly. And I worked very hard back in October, November to try to figure that out. And I just sent that issue brief to Representative Kimball, which means I should be able to find it easily. Yeah, here we go. Okay. So, oh, that was released on November 21st. So I can send this to Amy and she can put it on the, let's see, she can put it on the website for the committees if you like. Thank you. Sure. And Representative Martin. So, Joyce, I know you mentioned you don't have a ton of information on the data, but I'm curious to know what you might have for information on PUA benefits for dairy farmers. I know like in April, there was an overage crisis where milk was being dumped and things like that. So I'm just curious to know how many farmers may have benefited from that if at all? I would love to be able to say that I could find the data for you, but we have no data on characteristics of people who are receiving PUA. So it's possible that eventually the Vermont Department of Labor will have the time to look into that. But honestly, I don't know if they are collecting data on the sector from which those folks are coming. So I just don't know. Okay. Thank you. Sorry. Okay. Are there any other questions for Joyce at this moment? Representative Bloomley? I apologize. I just wanted, I think that Emma had asked on her earlier question about what we may know about BIPOC for Monters and their particular experience of unemployment. Right. So the data on race and ethnicity and that sort of characteristic in Vermont is extremely limited. And I'm not sure why. I've asked the Vermont Department of Labor folks and have not received a response from them yet. It turns out that about half of the data in Vermont does not identify race or ethnicity or those characteristics. So we just don't know very much, unfortunately. And if I hear back from Matt Berowitz and Cameron Wood over at DOL, I'll certainly let you know. But it is surprising that we are missing data for 47% of the UI recipients. Well, and I just, I wondered, what does that mean? Does that mean that the unemployment forms that they're filling out are different in different offices or that there's a okay. I don't know, unfortunately. Any other questions? Okay, Joyce, we can continue. Okay, Amy, let's move on to the addendum. Okay. And in the addendum, I'm just trying to better understand how it is that we got up to 73% of UI beneficiaries in Vermont being women. That was surprising to me and it turns out that it should have been surprising to me. Whoops. We want the addendum now and that's still the issue brief. Yep. I'm sorry. It's too small for me to see clearly. One sec. That's still not it. That's the addendum. Yes. Ooh, that was it. No, that's the old one. Oh, this is embarrassing. Okay. Well, I appreciate you sharing your screen because otherwise I'd be in trouble. Okay. I think we've got it now. Do we? Nope. I'm still seeing the issue brief rather than the addendum. This is just odd. Okay. I wish I could see the screen before I share it. Nope. Yes, that's the right one. There we go. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Very good. Okay. So the first page is just trying to say in words what you're about to see on pages two and three. So let's move down to page two where you see the red and blue figure. Yes. Okay. Now, don't get scared by this chart, which looks a little bit like spaghetti on a plate. So what I wanted to look at is in normal times, how do the shares of men and women receiving UI over the year vary? And so I went back to the beginning of 2018. And so what we're looking at here is 2018, 2019, and then 2020. You can see the months marching across the bottom of the chart there. And of course, I'm looking at the proportions of recipients of unemployment insurance in Vermont. So the solid blue line represents the proportion of men who were receiving unemployment insurance benefits. Again, these are just traditional benefits. And you can see that in February 2018, we got up as high as what 76%, 75%, something like that. So normally in the winter months, we have a very large share of people who are receiving unemployment benefits who are men. And that makes sense because of hard winters in Vermont, meaning that construction industry workers are not on the job for the most part. So we have a lot of construction workers receiving UI benefits in the winter months. And you can see at the same time, if you just go down the chart at the bottom there, you see the solid red line. And those are the women, the proportion of women receiving benefits. And that's quite low. It's about 25% in February of 2018. And then if you move across the chart, you can see that that blue line dips in the summer months. So in July and August, we have a very low proportion of men receiving UI benefits and a somewhat higher, what 57% maybe, who are women in the summer months. Now the dashed lines represent the proportions for the country as a whole, the US as a whole. So you can see the same seasonal patterns, but less pronounced. Okay, now when we move to 2018, from 2018 to 2019, we see the same pattern. So higher proportions in the winter, lower proportions of men in the summer. And that continues into February of 2020, when we had a pretty high proportion of men and a lower proportion of women. And then the pandemic hit and the red line goes curfewy. It goes sky high. So now we're looking at October, November of 2020, over on the right hand side, the solid red line is showing you that 74% in October, 73% in November were women on the UI roles. And the share of men was much lower. I didn't mention the word she session previously, I should have done so. But many people are calling the COVID-19 recession the she session, because it is hitting women proportionately more severely. So that's exactly what you're seeing with that high red line all of a sudden in 2020. Are there questions about that chart? Joyce, I'm just wondering when I'm looking in October, November, traditionally, we start seeing the rise of unemployment in men, and we're not seeing that like we did in 2018 and 2019. And there was a really big dip down of unemployment in men throughout the summer and then even into the fall. I'm wondering if we understand what is driving that. Yes. So one thing you need to remember is that I'm looking at the proportion of men and women who are receiving unemployment benefits. And this sort of hides the numbers. But in a usually year in 2018 and 2019, we had about 6,000 people receiving unemployment insurance benefits in the winter months, and only about 2,000 people receiving them in the summer months. So these are proportions of different numbers. And then when we got to the pandemic, all of a sudden, we had 20,000, 24,000 people receiving benefits. So you can still have lots of men 25% of 20,000 is what 500 people. So that's still a lot more men who are receiving UI benefits in the fall than was previously the case in 2018, 2019. But we just have so many more women who are receiving UI benefits that it swamps the men's share. Does that help? Yeah. Yeah, thank you. Sure. Okay, good. If everyone's ready, we can move on to the next chart on page three. Oh, boy, that's really small. I apologize. Okay, so what I'm trying, that helps, thank you. What I'm trying to do here is to think about the shares of UI recipients who come from different industries or different sectors of the economy over the year. So I chose February and August of 2019 to try to see differences in where people are coming from who are receiving UI benefits. So along the bottom, we have different sectors. Yeah, that's good. So we've got agriculture, forestry fishing, hunting, mining utilities. And then you see that big spike, the blue spike is February 2019 under construction. Okay, so that means a lot of people among the what back in February 2019, it was 5000 people receiving unemployment benefits and 35% of them came from the construction industry. And you can imagine that most of them were men, right? So that fits in with the high share of men during the winter months, unusual times. You can see the orange line represents hot August. And in August only 5% of people receiving UI benefits were men, right? So most of them are back at work. If we keep moving to the right across the chart, we're looking at manufacturing, wholesale trade, retail trade, transportation and warehousing, it keeps going. I will pause until I get to way over on the right. You can see accommodation and food services with that spike, that orange spike going up to about 20% in August of 2019. Now, I don't have a really good explanation of this because you would think that lots of people would be finding work in accommodation and food services during the month of August in Vermont. However, you have to remember again that this is among a smaller group of UI recipients. So if this is 20% of, I guess there were about 3000 people receiving UI benefits back in August of 2019, that's only about 600 people, okay? So remember previously we were talking about construction workers in February making up a third of 5000. So what's that? I don't know. That's like 1800 or something. It's a big difference. So we're looking at shares on this chart and you have to translate back into numbers if you want to think about how many Vermonters were coming from a certain industry and receiving UI benefits. You can also see a difference there in healthcare and social services and in educational services. So remember this is August and there may be some educational workers who are looking for work in August. Are there any questions about this chart? It's still pre-pandemic. This is still 2019. Absolutely, 2019. So again, I'm just trying to get a notion in my brain about the sectors that are feeding the unemployment insurance system in a normal year. So we hope going forward that right now we have this, well, we don't have the data for January yet, but we imagine we still have a very high percentage of women on the UI roles. But as the hospitality sector recovers, we hope that those women will be able to go back to work. The big question here is what happens with child care and school-aged kids and older family members? Will they be able to go back to their usual child care school, etc. arrangements? So that's one big question. And will we get the vaccine distributed to Vermonters and to other folks who we'd like to come to Vermont in order to fuel our hospitality sector? So this is the end of my presentation. I'm happy to discuss other issues or other questions if people have any. Okay, Representative Parsons. Thank you. I just had a question, Joyce. If any of the side-by-side comparisons were done with Vermont against other states that are similar, I know we took a much stronger position on closing things down and things like that, which seems to have been the main driver of the differences here. Have we looked at other states that were similar in comparison to our lockdown as opposed to the nation as a whole? We have not. We being I have not. It would take some data work and if time allows, I would love to do that. Do you have states in mind that you'd like to see? Not at the top of my head. I just know that some of the states were more comparable to the path we took in dealing with the pandemic than others. And if the numbers bear out the same for them as well. And you're especially interested in the women's share or the sector share. Yeah, I'm just curious because there's a huge difference in yes. I'll leave it at that. Yes, the women's share of the unemployment. Okay. Thank you. Sure. Representative Nigro. Thank you. My question might to some degree come from a similar place as the last one, but looking at the figures and talking about the sectors that have been impacted, it makes a lot of sense to me that women have been most impacted and are making such a large percentage. What I'm curious about is specifically why we're so much different than the rest of the country. Why the impact has been so much larger here. And I understand we might have a bigger restaurant and lodging industry and that might be some of it. Do you have any other insights about that? Is our percentage of workforce participation for women in Vermont typical? Is that pretty standard across the country? Or do we have a higher percentage in normal times in the workforce that are women? So what I remember is that we do have a higher labor force participation rate for women than many other states. I can't tell you exactly what the numbers are, but I do remember that it's higher. So that would account for a small piece. But even if you add all these pieces together, you can't explain 73% versus 50%. So something else is going on. Representative Kalaki. Thank you, Chair. And Joyce, looking, I'm still looking at your figure two that you just recently shared with us with the February and August 2019 by sector. Do you have the data yet for February and August 2020 to see how the pandemic shifted these by sector or not? The data do exist. I should warn you that the way the data are presented is by month. So you actually have to go in and pull down data from each month. There's no nice time series constitutional data set. So yes, I can look at 2020 and see how things were different. Yeah, I'm guessing the accommodation and food services sector would be shooting way up there. Yeah. And for my background in the arts, it seems that since the arts all shut down completely, February, that the arts sector will certainly change the numbers in the August numbers. And I just wondered if what else shifted? Okay. Thank you. Sure. Any other questions for Joyce? Chair Stevens, anything to add? Simply thank you, Joyce and committees for meeting. This is disturbing information on its face and I appreciate you diving down into it as best you can at this time. But it really gives I've never seen any figures like this or I've never seen such a disparity like this. And it really puts a picture on one of the pictures that we're dealing with in the pandemic. So thank you for putting it together. Thank you for sharing it with us. And I think we'll be able to use this as just as a really important touch point moving forward as we try to deal with the economic recovery. Representative Kimball. I'm only wondering, Joyce, if one of the charts we showed where the trends of men and women and the cycles and going through, which is very helpful. But then you talked about the numbers of the number of unemployed men as high as it would have been at this time of year in previous cycles or higher. I just wonder if you could, without much difficulty, you could tell me if it's too difficult, instead of percentage actual numbers, numbers for that particular so we can see what that looks like because the number of women unemployed versus the one number of men, that's where I think we'll see the huge departure. That would be great. That's a good idea. Thank you. And I should thank Representative Kimball. He actually asked questions that prompted me to do the charts in the addendum asking about the cyclical patterns of men and women's shares over time. So thank you for that. And yes, I grumbled while I was pulling down the data, but it turned out to be a pretty interesting set of charts. So thank you. Very informative. Okay, Representative Mulvaney Stannick. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And this is just probably a newbie question as well, but I really appreciate all the work that JFO does to pull the numbers. And I wonder how legislators overlap policy, dates of policies being implemented and tried. So COVID relief funds, there were two waves in 2020 and one included relief money through businesses, of course, that's a small portion for women in minority or BIPOC owned. It was a very small portion. And just curious to me like how we can also bring that into the conversations to know this big piece of policy was tried. And then we saw the unemployment impacts within the next month or two just to line things up. And I don't know if that's a part that your office can offer. But as we look forward to the next wave of COVID relief funds and other policy changes, I think it would be helpful for me at least to align those to really be able to say, this made a meaningful impact or we didn't do much. We just were very general in the in COVID relief, for all sorts of reasons, general in the response. And we didn't target these kinds of populations and looking to other states too who've tried that because this is a really important thing for us to stay, in my opinion, say laser focused on because women are clearly experiencing the economic grunt of this pandemic. And we need to be responsive and strategic in how we do more recovery. Right. So that's a really interesting question. And I was listening to folks from ACCD talk about the economic recovery grants earlier this week in Senate economic development. And they revealed that they are working on a report that will come out, I believe in mid February, that will identify characteristics of businesses that received the economic recovery grants. So that I believe will identify women owners, I believe that they were they were asked the question. I believe the answer is yes. JFO doesn't have access to that information that was confidential to ACCD. So we won't be able to look at the data ourselves, but we'll be certainly interested in their report. Now regarding other programs like PPP, the big federal paycheck protection program. I don't know if ACCD has lots of information about characteristics of recipients. I simply don't know. So that's a good question to ask the ACCD folks, or maybe it's DOL that would have information. I don't know. Yeah. And I think within some of within the categories of grants, and especially when we had pots of money out for different organizations, and with the women owned and minority owned businesses, some of those were moved into the regular grants because they needed more help. So it's not going to give us a complete number, but it will give us some data on what we're looking for. Right. So I saw that Representative Byron just made a comment that the SBA, the Small Business Administration, might be a good place to look for some data on those questions as well. Yes. Anything else for Joyce? Stephanie? Representative Byron? I'm just a comment about the looking into the data of the programs that have already, and the grants that have already been provided. And a large part of those grants were not for sole proprietors, but that small portion of grants for women and minority owned businesses sole proprietors could apply for those. So it's going to be difficult data to sort out and to compare apples to apples and apples to oranges. It's just going to be a tough one, I think, doable, but it's not going to be straightforward. Right. So you're talking about the many buckets of different sources of help for businesses. Absolutely true. Yeah, it's going to be years before we have a complete picture, I think. Representative Kimball just cited a number of 42%. Would you like to talk about that? Sure. I believe ACCD in November, I believe, provided a report to the committees on economic development both the House and the Senate and which they reported geographic distribution, industry distribution, gender distribution, and also by race. So I'll hunt that down and share with this group so that you can have that information. That was before the final round of grants were made. So it's still preliminary, but that was for all the grants previously. So it's pretty good information you can see as to how it's distributed across different demographic sectors and size of business too. I had forgotten about that. So thank you. Anything else? I want to say thank you all for your comments. This is great and it's nice to know that people are really interested and I will investigate some of these ideas. It's very good. Thank you very much Joyce. We appreciate your work and joining us this morning and appreciate the General Housing Military Affairs Committee joining us. It actually lightens your load up a little bit Joyce by having our two committees join and I appreciate Chair Stevens asking to bring his committee in with us. I think anytime we have the opportunity to do that, I think we're better off because there's always questions that other committees may ask that we may not ask and I think we have some good information and some good discussions that we need to have to understand better how we can help our women employees. Tom? Yeah and just following up on that Chair Marcotte, I really appreciate you letting us crash your committee hearing today. I think the joint hearings are something to keep looking at, especially in our two committees where we deal with the same issue perhaps from a different side and you know but taking the time and really lessening the time needed from in this case, Joyce, to have to do the same presentation twice. This is something that I think is a real positive in Zoom Peelier here and so if we can you know share and not just on this issue but I think there are other issues that I'd like us to make sure that we keep those channels open through this as long as we have this technique. Why not? I agree. Thank you and thank you for having us. Thank you. Thanks once again Joyce. We appreciate it and thank you members for your input and your time and your good questions.