Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu
For many across Wisconsin, the COVID-19 pandemic has left them without a job, and that trend was seen locally as well.
SeehaferNews.com spoke with Senator Devin LeMahieu recently, and the Oostburg resident gave us a little recap of the unemployment issue throughout the pandemic. “In March and April, we hit 13.6% unemployment in Wisconsin,” he explained. “A lot of people lost their jobs in just a month there, but we have seen steady declines in the unemployment rate. In August it fell from 7,1% down to 6.2% which is great. [We are] beating all our neighbors, except for the state of Iowa, which is at 6%.”
The state rate is also well below the national average which sits at 8.4%. The 9th Senate District representative says that Manitowoc County is also doing better than the state rate, sitting at 5.4%. He attributed the decline to the state of the economy, and to the fact that 16,700 private sector jobs were added in August.
While this is good news, there are still many people that have not received a single unemployment check since they lost their jobs back in March, something LeMahieu calls “frustrating.”
He said the Department of Workforce Development had to deal with an unprecedented number of new unemployment claims in a very short amount of time, which they obviously struggled with. LeMahieu said that there are “still almost 100,000 people who are still waiting for their benefits.”
The Senator said that between March and July only 1% of all phone calls to the DWD were actually answered.
The DWD Secretary recently resigned, and is being replaced, a move LeMahieu hopes will help them “get caught up and we can get people the benefits that they are waiting for.”
