CBER in the News

17 December 2020 - Chris Otts (WDRB)

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – Kentucky has regained about two-thirds of the jobs the state lost in the pandemic, but the Bluegrass State still has about 90,000 fewer jobs than in March, according to seasonally adjusted government data released Thursday.

Kentucky’s jobs picture isn’t much different than that of the nation as a whole, which has lost 8.4 million jobs since March.

The number of jobs in Kentucky has declined 4.5% since March, compared to 5.6% in the nation as whole, according to WDRB’s analysis of government data.

1 December 2020 - Austin Horn (The State Journal)

Franklin County’s unemployment rate in 2020 tells a volatile story. 

Two months after a February low of 3.6% unemployment, the county’s rate shot up dramatically to 15.1% in response to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

By September, the state’s latest figure for Franklin County had the estimated unemployment rate sliding back to 5.5% — a nearly pre-pandemic figure. 

20 November 2020 - Messenger Inquirer

Kentucky’s unemployment rate is on the rise. The Kentucky Education and Workforce Development Cabinet’s Center for Statistics reported a 7.4% rate in October, up from 5.6% the prior month. 

Despite that jump, Mike Clark, the director of the University of Kentucky’s Center for Business and Economic Research, noted more Kentuckians reported working in October. The civilian workforce was nearly 2 million last month, up more than 62,000 from September. 

19 November 2020 - Steve Roger (WTVQ)

Kentucky’s seasonally adjusted preliminary October 2020 unemployment rate was 7.4 percent, according to the Kentucky Center for Statistics (KYSTATS), an agency within the Education and Workforce Development Cabinet (EWDC).

The preliminary October 2020 jobless rate was up 1.8 percentage points from September 2020 and up 3.1 percentage points from the 4.3 percent recorded for the state one year ago.

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Nov. 19, 2020) — Forty-seven Kentucky schools have been labeled "bright spots" in a new report released by The Center for Business and Economic Research (CBER) in the Gatton College of Business and Economics at the University of Kentucky.

11 November 2020 - The News-Enterprise

Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence named several Kentucky public schools as educational “bright spots,” including two schools in Hardin County Schools.

Each academic year, a few of Kentucky’s public perform better than expect­ed on measures of edu­cational achievement which are called “bright spots,” according to a news release.

10 November 2020 - Josh Shortt (WNKY)

The Prichard Committee of Kentucky, in conjunction with the Center for Business and Economic Research – Gatton College of Business and Economics at the University of Kentucky, examined and analyzed the 173 Kentucky public school districts and their 1,446 schools.

From these schools, the Prichard Committee identified 47 schools as “bright sports” based on elevated levels of performance on state standardized measurements.

21 October 2020 - The Lane Report

FRANKFORT, Ky. — Kentucky’s seasonally adjusted preliminary September 2020 unemployment rate was 5.6%, according to the Kentucky Center for Statistics (KYSTATS), an agency within the Education and Workforce Development Cabinet (EWDC).

The preliminary September 2020 jobless rate was down 1.9 percentage points from August 2020 and up 1.3 percentage points from the 4.3% recorded for the state one year ago.

15 October 2020 - Steve Rogers (WTVQ)

Kentucky’s seasonally adjusted preliminary September 2020 unemployment rate was 5.6 percent, according to the Kentucky Center for Statistics, an agency within the Education and Workforce Development Cabinet (EWDC).

The preliminary September 2020 jobless rate was down 1.9 percentage points from August 2020 and up 1.3 percentage points from the 4.3 percent recorded for the state one year ago.

13 October 2020 - Russ Cassady (Appalachian News-Express)

As Eastern Kentucky’s unemployment rates continue to rise despite a post-COVID-19 lockdown boost, another key economic figure shows that the region still has far to go to consider its economy “recovered.”

On Sept. 24, the Kentucky Center for Statistics released the state’s county-level unemployment data for August, showing that, while unemployment rose in all 120 counties in August, no area has been hit as hard by that rise as Eastern Kentucky.