EDD website goes down as jobless try to file claims
The website of California’s troubled Employment Development Department was unable to process claimants’ information over the weekend and was still erratic Monday.
“Limited service: SDI Online and UI Online,” the EDD posted on its website late Monday morning, using the acronyms for state disability insurance and unemployment insurance.
“Some customers are experiencing issues using these services,” EDD wrote. “We’re working to restore service as soon as possible. Please check back later.”
EDD downplayed the issue in an email Monday afternoon, describing it as “some claimants” experiencing “intermittent issues.” The agency said more than a half million people were able to certify over the weekend and Monday.
The agency said its IT team is working on the issue and it will post an update on its SDI and UI Online pages when it’s fixed. Meanwhile claimants with problems should just check back later, it said.
Thousands of jobless people flocked to social media on Sunday to say that they were unable to certify their claims, a process that must occur every two weeks for unemployment benefits to continue.
“I need to file my claim ASAP or I can’t pay my mortgage,” said Marty Roth of Daly City, a facilities assistant laid off since May.
She started trying to certify yesterday afternoon and kept getting weird error messages. “Each time I tried, the error occurred in a different way,” she said. “I haven’t had any problems before and now it seems that they’ve made some changes that have kiboshed my own abilities to file my claim. I was starting to get scared because when those things happen, you always feel like it’s something you did. It’s like: Please just put up a notification.”
EDD has struggled throughout the pandemic to keep up with the deluge of jobless claims.
Senate Republican Leader Scott Wilk, RSanta Clarita, said the latest issue underscored EDD’s ineptitude. “The agency’s IT is so dysfunctional it had to create a page so Californians can track whether the website is actually down or it is just so pathetically slow a normal person would assume it was,” he said in a statement.
Last week EDD said it would need until April to have infrastructure in place for selfemployed people and those on a federal extension plan to certify for benefits, although they will get retroactive coverage.