It's no secret the novel coronavirus has sapped jobs nationwide, but Kentucky has suffered the most of any state by one measure.
Unemployment claims as a percentage of the labor force in Kentucky have totaled about 33 percent, the highest level in the country, Fitch Ratings said in a report released Thursday.
The analysis compared cumulative and advance initial claims filed since the week that ended March 14 as a percentage of the March labor force.
Before the pandemic began to spread, unemployment claims as a percentage of the workforce were less than 1% in all states, according to the report.
Hawaii, crippled by the downturn in tourism, was second in the ranking released Thursday, while South Dakota's unemployment claims as a percentage of the labor force were just 8 percent, showing that the economic effects of the pandemic have varied widely.
"The varied state levels experienced to date point to the uneven effects of the coronavirus and the potential for a wide range of recovery in employment and growth across the states," the report said.
Differences in the spread of the virus and, easing of social distancing rules, the economic mix of each state and other factors play roles in the number of jobs lost, the report said.
Those factors also will help determine how quickly states can recover.
Fitch noted that the measure used in its report can differ from other measures of unemployment, such as the insured unemployment rate, but was consistent across states.
A separate analysis released Friday by the Economic Policy Institute reached a similar conclusion.
It put jobless claims in Kentucky in the eight weeks ending May 2 at 32.3% of the labor force, the highest in the nation.
The only other states above 30% were Hawaii, at 31.7, and Georgia at 31.1, according to the analysis.
A total of 674,000 Kentucky residents have filed for unemployment since the pandemic flared in early March, according to the EPI report.
There were 2,084,089 people in the state's civilian labor force in February, before the massive job losses started in March, according to the state Education and Workforce Development Cabinet.
The state has struggled at times to deal with the tsunami of unemployment claims, but Gov. Andy Beshear recently said the backlog had been whittled down considerably. Kentucky residents can apply for unemployment benefits at https://kcc.ky.gov/career/Pages/default.aspx.
A separate report Thursday from the U.S. Department of Labor gave some indication that the bleeding may be slowing.
The agency reported that initial claims filed in Kentucky for the week ending May 2 totaled 80,060, down from 91,223 in the prior week.
That measure of new claims has been trending down since the report covering the week that ended April 11.
Across the U.S., non-farm payroll employment fell by 20.5 million jobs in April as workplaces shuttered because of coronavirus pandemic, pushing the national unemployment rate to 14.7 percent, according to a report issued Friday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Some estimates put the jobless rate closer to 20 percent.
