Sahar Chmais  Buda Area Chamber of Commerce (BACC), in conjunction with the Hays County Food Bank, hosted its first Zoom-A-Thon on Dec. 5 to provide food for residents in need of aid this season.  “We have seen an increased need since the beginning of the pandemic,” said Eleanor Owen-Osham, executiv...

Hays County’s unemployment rate for May was 11.7 percent and between May 27 and June 27, 2,629 county residents applied for unemployment benefits. The top industries those people represented are full-service restaurants, colleges and universities, limited-service restaurants, elementary and secondar...

Hays County and the state of Texas as a whole shared the dubious distinction of a 12.8 percent unemployment rate for April. The Austin-Round Rock Metropolitan Statistical Area fared a bit better at 12.2 percent; however the jobless rate for the city of Kyle hit 13.3 last month. That’s a jump from 3....

The COVID-19 pandemic, and the closure of businesses because of it, has resulted in more Texans applying for unemployment benefits this month during the whole of 2019. During the week that ended on March 7, 65 Hays County residents had filed an unemployment claim. Less than a month later, by April 4...

Staff report The requirement for people collecting unemployment benefits to conduct active job searches has been waived as part of the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Also waived is the “waiting week” that required job seekers to go without benefits for one week. The measures, taken on or...