Natural State News

Arkansas’s decision to withdraw from the Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation program appears to have paid off as the Natural State witnesses an increase in job applications.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, in May directed the state to end its participation in the program, which distributes weekly checks in the amount of $300, after June 26.

“The programs were implemented to assist the unemployed during the pandemic when businesses were laying off employees and jobs were scarce,” Arkansas Times reported Hutchinson as saying at the time. “As we emerge from COVID-19, retail and service companies, restaurants, and industry are attempting to return to prepandemic unemployment levels, but employees are as scarce today as jobs were a year ago. The $300 federal supplement helped thousands of Arkansans make it through this tough time, so it served a good purpose. Now we need Arkansans back on the job so that we can get our economy back to full speed.”

Natural State News reported that Arkansas Division of Workforce Services data placed the state’s unemployment rate for May at 4.4%, which was more than a point lower than the national average.

In all, 26 states — mostly led by Republican governors with the exception of Louisiana — had opted out of federal unemployment assistance, according to Natural State News.

As of this past May, KATV reported, Arkansas’s three largest metropolitan areas have seen job gains, nearly 50,000 more people employed than in May 2020 when the pandemic began to peak.

Northwest Arkansas, which is home to the Walmart Inc. corporate headquarters, registered a 9.1% jump in employment numbers.

After the last batch of pandemic unemployment relief was allocated, Arkansas Secretary of Commerce Mike Preston announced that companies across the state are seeing more job applications, The Fort Smith Times Record reported.

Preston added that around 70,000 job openings have yet to be filled.