News
9 April 2020 - Stephen Loiaconi (WJLA)
WASHINGTON (Sinclair Broadcast Group) — As federal officials and members of Congress weigh further steps to bolster the economy against the ramifications of the coronavirus outbreak, economists and the public remain hopeful the nation’s financial health can be mostly restored once the public health crisis has passed.
7 April 2020 - Lindsey Piercy (UKnow)
As the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) continues to spread across the U.S., the government is responding in unprecedented ways. Measures to protect the nation’s most vulnerable citizens — though necessary — will have a lasting impact on the global economy.
Recently, the U.S. Federal Reserve announced it would go beyond its prior commitment of $700 billion in bond purchases to buy "the amounts needed.” The goal is to keep markets functioning and the economy stable.
20 March 2020 - Stu Johnson (WEKU)
The director of the University of Kentucky’s Center for Business and Economic Research says predicting future profitability on Wall Street is particularly difficult with the current coronavirus crisis. Mike Clark added how information is processed is also hard to pin down.
16 March 2020 - Will Wright (Lexington Herald-Leader)
Gov. Andy Beshear ordered the state Monday to begin waiving Kentucky’s waiting period for unemployment benefits as job losses from the novel coronavirus pandemic mounted.
Kentucky Career Center spokeswoman Holly Neal said officials in Kentucky’s unemployment office are working to accommodate the governor’s order.
Beshear also said the state will waive the requirement that applicants search for work while Kentucky remains in a state of emergency because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
FRANKFORT, Ky. (The Lane Report) — Kentucky’s seasonally adjusted preliminary January 2020 unemployment rate was 4.3%, according to the Kentucky Center for Statistics (KYSTATS), an agency within the Education and Workforce Development Cabinet (EWDC).
The preliminary January 2020 jobless rate was unchanged from December 2019 and up 0.1% from the 4.2% recorded for the state in January 2019. The U.S. seasonally adjusted jobless rate for January 2020 was 3.6%, up from 3.5% in December 2019, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
10 March 2020 (Northern Kentucky Tribune)
Kentucky’s annual unemployment rate was 4.3 percent in 2019 unchanged from 4.3 percent in 2018, while nonfarm employment gained 8,600 jobs, according to the Kentucky Center for Statistics (KYSTATS), an agency of the Kentucky Education and Workforce Development Cabinet.
The U.S. annual unemployment rate dropped to 3.7 percent in 2019 from 3.9 percent in 2018.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ estimate of the number of employed Kentuckians for 2019 was 1,983,577. This figure is up 14,966 from the 1,968,611 employed in 2018.
Diabetes represents a growing health concern for the nation and Kentucky. It is a chronic condition that causes blood sugar levels to rise and contributes to other serious health conditions such as heart and kidney disease. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists diabetes as the 7th leading cause of death in the nation. The disease imposes significant costs on the country’s economy. The American Diabetes Association estimates that the U.S. spends $237 billion annually on diabetes-related health care.
Smoking has been estimated to increase health care costs in the United States by $167.5 billion annually (Xu et al. 2015). In Kentucky, smoking adds $2.5 billion in health care expenditures each year. Most of these costs were paid by public programs such as Medicaid and Medicare. While these costs are significant, they represent only a portion of the costs that smoking imposes on society. Smoking also leads to poorer labor market outcomes. Smokers are more likely to be unemployed, earn lower wages, and die prematurely than non-smokers.
12 February 2020 (UKnow)
Noting that prosperity is increasingly tied to place and preparation, the Center for Business and Economic Research (CBER) — the applied economic research branch of the Gatton College of Business and Economics at the University of Kentucky — released its 48th Kentucky Annual Economic Report today.
This report is one of the important ways that the Center for Business and Economic Research fulfills its mission to examine various aspects of the Kentucky economy. The analysis and data presented here cover a variety of topics that rangefrom an economic forecast for Kentucky in 2020 to a broad presentation of factors affecting the economy.
