Unemployment delay
A one-week waiting period is back for state residents seeking jobless benefits.
A one-week waiting period is back in effect for Wisconsinites applying for unemployment, as the coronavirus pandemic continues to lead to job losses.
The waiting period went back into effect Sunday after Gov. Tony Evers vetoed a Republican COVID-19 response bill last week. Republicans added the waiver of the one-week waiting period in an attempt to get the governor to sign a bill that included several COVID measures he disagreed with.
Compromise legislation Evers backed would have extended the suspension of the waiting period, but that bill was not adopted by the Assembly.
Republicans passed a law requiring unemployed people to wait a week before they could claim benefits a decade ago as a way to bolster the state’s unemployment fund. Lawmakers suspended the rule during the early months of the pandemic last year, but that action expired Sunday. Evers has previously called for permanently repealing the waiting period.
The Evers veto came on the heels of a series of disagreements about how the state is going to address unemployment issues, specifically an old and ailing filing system that takes weeks and even months to program, drastically slowing down the speed at which payments can be made to recipients.
Evers urged lawmakers again to take up a fix for the unemployment system after they declined to take up measures in a special session called by the governor in January.
“After these issues with our unemployment system were raised during the Great Recession and now again during COVID-19, it would be callous and irresponsible for any elected official to sit around and wait for the next economic crisis while taking no action to remedy a predictable outcome,” Evers said in a letter to lawmakers last week.
“Replacing this system will take years, that’s why it should have been done years ago, and it’s why I am urging you today to give this issue immediate consideration and action,” Evers said.
Evers encouraged lawmakers to look at the special session legislation, which would have provided $5.4 million to start the upgrade process this year, he said. The entire project is expected to cost nearly $90 million in its entirety.
The governor’s request follows the clearance of a massive backlog of unemployment claims by the Department of Workforce Development, caused by not only the antiquated mainframe unemployment is operated on, but also a lack of staff, an unprecedented wave of claims at the beginning of the pandemic and other issues.
Though the backlog is cleared, some
Wisconsinites are still waiting to hear about their claims, either caught up in adjudication or waiting on federal unemployment programs that have not yet been implemented in the system.
New applications for unemployment have dropped slightly since the beginning of the year, with just over 15,500 people applying for regular unemployment and about 4,000 applying for federal programs as of Jan. 30, the last week of data available. For the same week, nearly 107,000 people filed ongoing regular unemployment claims, which does not include those filing weekly claims for federal programs.
‘I’m sad it’s gone on this long’
As Evers and lawmakers have squabbled about unemployment, some Wisconsinites
have continued to wait for their unemployment with questions going unanswered.
Bailey Hoover, a student at Madison Area Technical College, has been waiting on her unemployment after being laid off in August. She didn’t hear anything from the department until November when she was informed she had missed a phone call and not called back, although she had tried to return the call as soon as she saw she missed it, she said. She was denied benefits because of the missed call and she promptly filed an appeal.
After filing the appeal, a different set of issues were corrected on her account, and the department notified her benefits were allowed. Still, no benefits were released because her appeal —regarding a separate issue from those resolved — is still active.
Hoover, 27, isn’t sure what to do to fix the issue though, because when she calls the department, she gets different advice every time.
Hoover has been waiting about five months on benefits, which she figures are worth about $7,000.
“It’s hard to afford necessities,” she said. “I really need those benefits.”
In the meantime, she continues to check in on her appeal, but a date hasn’t been set yet. According to department data, she’s one of 16,240 appeals cases pending right now.
“I’m sad it’s gone on this long,” she said. “I’m lucky enough to have the help that I do, but it’s been a bad situation.”