New unemployment claims halted
Overwhelmed by a flood of jobless people amid the COVID-19 pandemic and struggling with aging technology, California’s state department responsible for paying unemployment claims has decided to stop processing new claims for two weeks as it attempts to catch up on a massive backlog.
Sharon Hilliard, director of the state Employment Development Department, made the announcement in a news release Saturday night.
The two-week “reset” that started on Saturday will continue until Oct. 5. It was included in recommendations from a “strike team” established by Gov. Gavin Newsom in July following months of growing criticism from state lawmakers and the public that unemployment benefits due to some laid-off workers have not been paid, that the agency’s staff has been difficult to reach by phone, that computer systems have failed, and that criminals using stolen Social Security numbers from corporate data breaches have fraudulently obtained EDD benefits.
“We are in this for the long haul,” Hilliard said in a statement. “The strike team’s recommendations provide an opportunity to pivot and improve our systems with a priority of delivering on the governor’s vision of innovative government systems that prioritize the customer experience, informed by data and great expertise.”
The employment department said Saturday that roughly 591,000 Californians are still waiting for initial unemployment claims filed more than three weeks ago to be processed. Some 1 million other people have received some form of payment, like an initial check, but have modified their claims with no response.
Fixing the problems won’t come quickly, however.
The backlog of claims is growing by 10,000 a day.
A hotline the department set up for the public receives 6.7 million calls a week. But there are only 20 employees to answer the calls, the strike team said.
“We can safely estimate that no more than 1 in 1000 people that are trying to reach this call center on a given day are getting through,” the strike team report found.