WORKFORCE WV DIRECTOR PROVIDES UPDATES ON JOB JUMPSTART PROGRAM, LABOR FORCE PARTICIPATION RATE
Additionally on Tuesday, Gov. Justice was joined by WorkForce West Virginia Director Scott Adkins, who began his remarks by offering an replace on the Governor’s new Job Jumpstart Program, which gives a one-time, $1,500 fee to eligible West Virginians who get a brand new job and stay employed for at the least eight weeks.
“The first function of Jumpstart is to get people again within the workforce,” Adkins mentioned. “We’ve employers who’re reaching out to WorkForce every single day, searching for expert laborers, searching for people who’ve technical abilities.
“There are many jobs on the market. We see indicators in each group as you journey all through West Virginia,” Adkins continued. “To place it in perspective, in January 2022, West Virginia had 50,000 job postings. On the similar time, we had 34,800 unemployed people – that’s 1.4 jobs obtainable for each unemployed West Virginian.
“So, below the Governor’s management, we launched our new Job Jumpstart Program and I may go on and on about how profitable this program has been in only a quick time period.”
Final week, WorkForce West Virginia announced that over 12,500 West Virginians have been approved to participate in this system.
Adkins went on to say that this system is important to bettering civilian labor power participation in West Virginia.
“Total, West Virginia’s labor power participation price has elevated almost 2% since 2015. Nevertheless, it has remained comparatively static since 2019, largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” Adkins mentioned. “If you get granular in a number of the information to determine what age teams we lag behind the nationwide common, 16 to 24 is a big group that is not working that ought to be working, in addition to people over the age of fifty.
“The state misplaced roughly 46,000 residents from 2012 to 2022, which additional decreases that inhabitants that is obtainable to work. West Virginia’s job demand has grown considerably over the previous decade, from a mean of twenty-two,167 month-to-month job postings in 2011 to a mean of over 56,000 month-to-month job postings in 2021,” Adkins continued. “One of many points that we face with our labor power participation price is that, as a result of we’re surrounded by 5 completely different states, 13.1% of West Virginians who’re eligible to work are working in one other state. The nationwide common is 3.1%.
“Below Governor Justice’s management, the state Workforce Growth Board has put collectively a robust group of leaders from the enterprise group, state authorities, and different organizations to strengthen West Virginia’s workforce improvement system. So we actually assume that we’re going to have the ability to enhance a few of these numbers.”
