DEED creates unemployment application schedule to cope with high demand

by MinnPost staff 03/30/202002/06/2024

DEED Commissioner Steve Grove said the federal government is quick to bail out states when trust funds evaporate. Credit: MinnPost photo by Peter Callaghan

DEED Commissioner Steve Grove: “The [unemployment insurance] trust fund is in really good shape.” — `[image_credit]MinnPost photo by Peter Callaghan[/image_credit][image_caption]DEED Commissioner Steve Grove[/image_caption]`

Desperate measures. The Pioneer Press’ Dane Mizutani reports: “As unemployment claims continue to hit an all-time high across the country, the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development has decided to assign specific days of the week for people to apply. … Anyone that hasn’t already applied for unemployment will now have to do so based on the last digit in their Social Security number.”

Best explanation of the Minnesota COVID-19 modeling we’ve seen. The Pioneer Press’ Dave Orrick reports: “Minnesotans are preventing tens of thousands of coronavirus deaths by making unprecedented sacrifices of personal freedoms and commerce in the face of the pandemic, according to the model that informed Gov. Tim Walz’s “Stay at Home” order. … Models of epidemics are fraught with uncertainty, and that’s especially the case now, as statisticians attempt to game out the behavior of a virus that was unknown to science four months ago among a population that has never experienced anything like it.”

Photo essay visits nursing home residents through the window. From the Duluth News Tribune’s Erica Dischino reports: “It’s a cool, foggy Tuesday afternoon. I stand in the foyer of the Bethesda senior living community in Willmar wearing a pair of rain boots, with a camera hanging from a strap around my neck. As the photojournalist for the West Central Tribune, I’ve taken photos at Bethesda many times, but never quite like this. … Tiffany Picard, the recreation director and volunteer coordinator at Bethesda, walks through the glass doors and greets me with a warm smile. She shows me a map of the facility with red dots marked on the rooms I would be visiting from the exterior.”

Playing an important role. The Star Tribune’s Jenna Ross writes: “The folks in the Minnesota Opera’s costume shop usually craft couture gowns with corsets, wondrous costumes in weighty fabrics. Works of art. … ‘Now we’re sewing rectangles to save lives,’ said Corinna Bakken, the opera’s costume director. … With shows on hold, workers in the opera’s shuttered costume and scene shops have turned to a new project: making face masks to protect people. The costumers are sewing masks for nurses, doctors and others facing shortages of protective gear according to patterns approved by HealthPartners. Scene shop workers are making the deliveries.”