Jobless payments backlog worsens
State labor payment pace stumbles amid backlash from state lawmakers
The state labor agency’s pace of making firsttime unemployment payments to jobless California workers amid coronavirus-linked business shutdowns has eroded badly in recent months, official federal government statistics show.
Revelations about the badly faltering pace of payments by the state Employment Development Department arrive as the state agency faces widening criticism from lawmakers.
The EDD has launched a plan, arising from one of the just-released recommendations of a strike team created by Gov. Gavin Newsom, to halt for two weeks the processing of jobless claims as it scrambles to chip away at a mountain of backlogged claims.
As a result of the two-week delay, the EDD envisions that it will take at least until January 2021 to eliminate the backlog. That means people who filed claims in March — a group that includes people who have yet to receive their first payments — could face nine months without payments.
The disclosure that it could take the EDD three to four more months to eliminate the backlog, coupled with the two weeks of not processing claims, infuriated lawmakers.
“This is unacceptable,” state Sen. John Moorlach, a Republican who represents portions of Orange County. “This abuse of California’s unemployed must end.”
In May, slightly more than 1 million initial unemployment claims were received by the EDD, which made about 872,400 first payments on claims. That is a payment rate of 87 percent of the initial claims, according to official statistics compiled by the U.S. Labor Department’s Employment & Training Administration.
But in June, the EDD received 1.15 million initial claims and made first-time payments that totaled 509,700, roughly a 44 percent payment rate.
In July, the EDD reported 1.16 million initial claims and made first payments to 368,000 re
cipients — a payment pace of only 32 percent.
On Saturday night, the state EDD announced that it would institute a two-week halt in processing claims because of a backlog in the range of 1.59 million claims, hoping the suspension of processing claims might help the state agency whittle away the logjam.
Since mid-March, when state and local government agencies began to order business shutdowns to combat the coronavirus, about 8.58 million California workers have filed initial unemployment claims.
“The report revealed that at least 1.6 million Californians and counting have unfulfilled benefits claims,” said State Assemblymember David Chiu, a Democrat who represents parts of San Francisco. “The size of this backlog is shockingly large. We have been frustrated at EDD’s ever-evolving lowball estimates of the backlog.”
Some lawmakers also criticized Newsom’s efforts at ensuring the EDD was prepared to deal with the avalanche of unemployment claims.
A broken call center and glitchridden website that was based on a primitive computer language has coalesced to hobble the EDD’s efforts to issue payments to California workers who had lost their jobs by the millions.
“The delays, lack of transparency from the governor, and mismanagement at the EDD are not only disappointing, but they are insulting to the California families who so desperately need this help,” said state Sen. Shannon Grove, a Republican who represents parts of Kern County.