KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Kansas spent nearly $15 million last week on unemployment, but that barely scratches the surface of the need amid the COVID-19 outbreak.
During a typical week from January to March in the past two years, Kansas provided unemployment benefits for roughly 8,500 workers.
Last week, Kansas provided benefits to 37,150 workers, a need more than four times greater than usual and growing.
Kansas adds fewer than 5,900 new unemployment claims in a typical three-week period from January to March during the past two years.
According to the Kansas Department of Labor, the state has received 129,698 new unemployment claims in the past three weeks as stay-at-home orders and business closures have forced many companies to shed staff.
The 37,150 Kansas residents who received unemployment last week represent fewer than 29% of the new claims the state’s Department of Labor has received since March 15.
Meanwhile, Kansas has gone from spending $3.5 million per week on unemployment claims on average to more than $14.8 million last week alone.
The Kansas City area has been particularly hard hit with unemployment claims, according to the Kansas Department of Labor.
During the first week of 2020, there were roughly 1,400 people receiving unemployment benefits in Johnson, Wyandotte and Leavenworth counties combined.
There are nearly 7,000 now. While only 4,475 Johnson County residents received unemployment last week, the Department of Labor shows there have been 17,752 new unemployment claims in the past two weeks.
It’s a similar story in Wyandotte and Leavenworth counties.
There are a little more than 2,200 residents in those two counties who received unemployment last week, but there have been 5,117 new claims in Wyandotte County and 1,938 new claims in Leavenworth County during the past two weeks.
There also have been dramatic increases in Douglas and Miami counties, but Sedgwick County, which includes Wichita, has been the hardest hit with 7,407 residents receiving unemployment assistance and more than 29,000 new claims in the past two weeks.
Most of the statewide initial unemployment claims for the week ending Jan. 4, 2020, were in the construction (517) and manufacturing (375) sectors, accounting for 49.2% of all new claims.
But that has changed as well.
The hotel and food service sector has been decimated in the past three weeks with 23,258 new unemployment claims.
There were 255 new claims filed for employees in that sector during the first three weeks of 2020, a 9,021% increase since the beginning of the year.
Manufacturing still was hit harder with 25,868 jobs lost in the past three weeks, but retail (12,241) and, health care and social assistance (14,000) also have shed thousands of jobs during that span.
