Some outdoor activities open; businesses need safety plans

24 Apr 2020


Business, Community, Economic Development, Government


By Carol Anderson, Guest Columnist 

The Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) reported that Executive Order 20-38 allows for some safe outdoor activities for people from a single household. They are working with business leaders and Chambers as well as other state agencies on a template for businesses to have a safety plan.

Regarding unemployment insurance, the agency keeps getting asked, by businesses what do they do if they call workers back and they don’t want to come back? The agency said that the business has an account with the unemployment division and they should report the worker and then they will be cut off of the program. DEED said they are still working on unemployment for self-employed persons and are making very good progress. They have just started paying on some of the applications they have received. To qualify, self-employment must be primary source of income, displaced by COVID-19, and were actively working in this capacity – can’t be from a passive income stream. See the Minnesota unemployment website for more details: www.dli.mn.gov.

I want to share something that I learned at a meeting this week about the State’s response to the flood of unemployment applications that came in. The state processed 451,790 applications in less than a month, which was approximately 1,200 per hour. They did not have enough staff in that division so they had 50 staff from other divisions come in plus they hired another 20 and added two servers to help with the systems.

Read the full article here.