Thousands still struggle with Pa.’s unemployment system
After countless hours of busy signals and more than 30 days between email exchanges, Pennsylvania residents trying to reach someone working at the state’s unemployment centers feel stretched thin.
The state has processed about 70% of the claims it has received since Gov. Tom Wolf closed all nonessential businesses in midMarch, sparking a historic surge in unemployment claims. But, with 30% of claims still waiting, more than 500,000 people have yet to see any economic relief.
“If you’re on the wrong end of the stats, that’s a frustrating experience,” Secretary of Labor and Industry Jerry Oleksiak said in an interview last week. “We are just going to keep plugging away to reduce that backlog. We don’t want to see that any more than the people who are on the receiving end of those benefits.”
“We’re getting money out the door; we’re doing what we can,” he said. “We know it’s frustrating.”
For some, it can be more than that. For Rodney Fink, a commercial painter from Jefferson Hills, it meant 300 calls to a phone line that would disconnect him every time. For Anita Renner, who worked in concessions at PPG Paints Arena and did administrative work for a local union, it meant she no longer could afford to help her elderly mother pay the bills and was worried about financing treatments for her dog’s cancer diagnosis.
For Ashley Yanke, a bartender who filed for unemployment March 22 and had not received any benefits as of May 8, it meant food stamps, a shut off of phone service and clothes that don’t fit her 4-year-old daughter because she can’t afford new outfits.
Ms. Yanke, 32, from Dormont, eventually got her stimulus check from the federal government in April, but until then she “had nothing, not a dollar.”
“It was a really, really tough month,” she said. “But now I’m afraid to touch any of [the money] because I don’t know when my boss is going to be able to reopen at this point in time. I’m hoping I’ll even have a job to go back to.”
Holding dollars back
Since March 15, the department has made over 11.7 million payments to claimants for a total of more than $5.4 billion in benefits as of May 7. But the staff is still working with “laserlike focus” to get through the backlog of claims.
For every staffer working, there have been 2,000 unemployment claims filed since mid-March, according to Mr. Oleksiak.
The 30% of claims that the state is still working through mostly require manual intervention from a staffer at an unemployment office because there was an error with the claim or there was an eligibility issue.
Those problems range from a dispute over why the applicant is out of work and whether that person is financially eligible for compensation to an incorrect address or wrong digits on the applicant’s Social Security number.
The most prevalent error is claimants putting a last name first and first name last, according to Susan Dickinson, director of the Office of Unemployment Compensation Benefits Policy.
“Something such as a wrong address, that’s something that’s not on a list somewhere. We don’t know if someone gave us a wrong address and they won’t know either,” Ms. Dickinson said.
Under normal circumstances, it would take a few days to make the necessary adjustments, said Bill Trusky, deputy secretary for unemployment compensation programs at the Department of Labor and Industry.
Now, it takes weeks. To speed up the process, the state is scaling up its unemployment centers with 500 people reassigned from other agencies, 250 new hires and 70 retirees.
Of the new hires, more than 100 will help respond to questions from the main resource line, which had a wait time of 34 days as of Thursday.
“We are not interested in denying people their benefits or holding their dollars back,” Mr. Oleksiak said at a state Senate hearing about the unemployment system Tuesday. “We are doing all we can, as quickly as we
can … I know that does not help someone who has to pay a bill today or feed their family tomorrow.”
‘Not set up to handle a crisis like this’
Mr. Fink, who filed for unemployment in mid-March after losing his painting job on March 13, isn’t worried about paying bills in the short term, but said he estimates the state owes him about $3,000 in benefits that he has yet to see.
His fiancee, who continued working for two weeks after Mr. Fink lost his job, already received her benefits.
“I thought maybe I did something wrong,” Mr. Fink, 24, said. “I kept going through [the unemployment compensation website], looking at my paperwork; it shows me filing and they’re receiving them but they’re not paying them.”
He has since gone back to work but plans to keep following up, saying, “Hey, I’m not getting paid at all even though I’m doing everything I’m supposed to be doing.”
On Thursday, Ms. Dickinson said the state had addressed most claims from mid-March. If an applicant has yet to receive any benefits, “that means something individually is happening and they should get in touch with us.”
But for many, like Mr. Fink, efforts to fax, email or phone the unemployment centers are met with silence.
“A lot of people are just not set up to handle a crisis like this. Our society is not set up to support them well through it,” said Julia Simon-Mishel, a supervising attorney with Philadelphia Legal Assistance, which helps Pennsylvania residents file for unemployment compensation.
“We understand that point. Unfortunately we are in a situation here in Pennsylvania — just like we are in almost every state in the country — where people are mostly in a wait-and-see mode, where there’s not much else to do but wait,” she said. “And that’s really hard to do when you are stuck at home wondering how you’re going to get groceries for your family.”
In Pennsylvania, the problem of handling a record number of claims isn’t helped by years of budget and staff cuts to the unemployment claims operation, due in part to the, until recently, low unemployment rate.
In addition, a slew of new federal programs created to provide more relief — like a supplemental $600 from the federal government for every person eligible for unemployment compensation or a new program that extends benefits to individuals who were previously not eligible — has exacerbated the problem.
“We’ve kind of asked them to do an impossible thing,” said Michele Evermore, a senior policy analyst at the National Employment Law Project, in New York.
Falling through cracks
Since March 15, workers in Pennsylvania’s unemployment centers have put in 47,000 hours of overtime.
They are stressed and anxious but volunteering to put in the extra hours, said Steve Catanese, president of Service Employees International Union Local 668, which represents workers in unemployment centers.
“You want to answer as many questions as you can because people need that guidance but I think people need the benefits processed more,” he said. “It’s how do you get money to people as fast as you can?”
Ms. Renner, 52, from Overbrook, was on the receiving end of one of the decisions to answer a phone call.
After four and a half weeks and more than 2,000 calls to the unemployment
center, she got in touch with someone who told her she “fell into the cracks somehow,” as she remembers it.
After correcting a problem with her application, the worker pushed it through the system and she was able to receive benefits.
But, after hearing conflicting reports from different workers at unemployment centers, she’s worried she isn’t getting the right amount and hasn’t received any official documentation to verify her benefits. Afraid the state could demand some of the money be returned, she’s back to waiting.
“We still have money saved up but that is disappearing pretty quick,” she said. “I just have to sit here and wait and hope for the best.”