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During the COVID-19 heyday, workers from virtually every sector of Hawaii’s workforce — health care excepted — rushed the state’s labor office online to file unemployment claims. That was the brutal nature of the pandemic, hitting indiscriminately and putting most jobs on hold or furlough. Today, most of the 381 new unemployment applicants are federal employees who’ve already missed their first paychecks — (no) thanks to the government shutdown. More fallout, and need, will surge soon — unless Congress ends the shutdown quickly. Today’s joblessness scourge, sadly, is wholly man-made.
