Glitches plague state office amid jobless relief backlog

California’s embattled labor agency acknowledged Monday that “an intermittent issue” has surfaced with its computer system that workers use to process claims for unemployment benefits.

The state Employment Development Department has told staffers for multiple state lawmakers that the computer system for handling jobless benefits is suffering outages and glitches.

“We’re trying to catch up with our IT folks,” said Loree Levy, a spokesperson for the state EDD. “It appears there was an intermittent issue.”

The EDD told the state legislative staffers that the labor agency is aware of the computer woes and that attempts are underway to fix the problems.

“My staff reached out to the EDD, which informed us they are aware of the problem and are working to resolve it,” said state Sen. Josh Becker, D-Menlo Park. “They did not provide an

ETA” to get the site working again.

The “Is It Down Right Now” website began reporting on Sunday that the EDD unemployment benefits site “is having problems.”

Thousands of people identifying themselves as individuals who were attempting to certify to receive jobless benefits posted comments on “Is It Down Right Now” of having trouble getting through to the EDD site or difficulties in being able to transact any requests on the site.

“Some customers are experiencing issues using these services,” was the message that one worker received while on the EDD unemployment benefits site, according to a post on the down detector site. “We’re working to restore service as soon as possible. Please check back later.”

Sen. Becker said the EDD needs to do a better job of keeping people informed about what is happening on the website. Becker said he took his concerns directly to EDD director Rita Saenz.

“EDD needs to improve its public reporting of key performance metrics,” Sen. Becker said. “I strongly urge EDD to include uptime and downtime in those metrics. I’m in conversations with the director on this topic.”

One California worker said that even after being able to get through to an EDD employee on the telephone, the EDD employee said it wouldn’t be possible to immediately provide assistance on Monday.

“I just finally was able to get ahold of someone after 100 calls, but they said they weren’t able to help me because their system was down,” the worker, Tierra Zachman, stated in a message sent to a state legislative staffer on Monday.

“EDD needs to improve its public reporting of key performance metrics.”

— State Sen. Josh Becker