California making progress on unemployment claim backlog
The pile of jobless applicants seeking state benefits is getting smaller, but government leaders last week said the state agency in charge it isn’t doing enough.
State Sen. Jerry Hill, who has been critical of the Employment Development Department, said Wednesday that the agency’s track record this year isn’t up to par.
“Some Californians have had their benefits unfairly delayed or denied, which is unacceptable,” Hill said during a hearing before the Senate Labor, Public Employment and Retirement Committee. “The people of California ask more of us.”
As of Oct. 7, the backlog of claims the EDD has been attempting to work through was roughly 1.34 million — a considerable drop from 1.56 million on Sept. 30, according to official dashboards posted by the EDD.
“The EDD’S digital transformation is indeed underway,” Carol Williams, EDD chief deputy director of operations, told the committee. “Following this process of improvement, which some call a roadmap, will lead to getting people their unemployment benefits as fast as possible.”
A growing number of California workers have turned to their state senators and Assembly members because the EDD has failed to provide them with useful information or assistance regarding their jobless claims.
“Our district staff members each have received thousands of calls from the public since mid-march” regarding EDD problems, said Sen, Holly Mitchell, a committee member. Mitchell said she helped answer phones for two days, adding, “The stories, the frustrations, the fears that I witnessed firsthand were really overwhelming.”
Some workers who filed for jobless benefits in mid-march have yet to receive their full unemployment benefits.
“You can imagine how frustrated people are,” said Sen. Richard Pan, a Democrat whose district includes parts of Sacramento County and Yolo County. “People have to call the EDD over and over and over again and can’t get through.”
Two-sided housing forecast
Despite the pandemic, real estate industry economists are predicting gains for California’s housing market in 2021.
House sales will rebound slightly next year from the pandemic, and home prices will continue edging upward, thanks to low mortgage rates and strong homeownership demand, according to the California Association of Realtors’ latest housing forecast.
“The uncertainty about the pandemic, sluggish economic growth, a rise in foreclosures, and the volatility of the stock market are all unknown factors that could
keep prices in check and prevent the statewide median price from rising too fast in the upcoming year,” said California Association of Realtors chief economist Leslie Appleton-young in the report released Oct. 13.
Under the organization’s “most likely” scenario, median prices for existing houses, which make up two-thirds of the market, will rise a modest 1.3% next year, hitting $648,760, the forecast said.
Sales — which have declined for the last three years — are forecast to rise 3.3% to 392,500 single-family transactions. Even at that rate, sales still would be 1.4% below 2019 levels.
The most likely scenario assumes a COVID-19 vaccine will be available in the first half of 2021, and just a modest rise in cases in the coming winter.
A worst- case scenario would occur if there’s also a rise in foreclosures, zero economic growth, and Congress remains deadlocked over federal economic stimulus plans. If those things were to occur, the forecast would shift to a 9.8% drop in house sales and a 16.4% drop in the median house price.
Disney CEO: Guidelines ‘arbitrary’
Bob Chapek, the new chief executive at Walt Disney Co., says California’s “arbitrary” theme park reopening guidelines were made “without regard for actual fact” by state leaders and are the most stringent standards in the nation.
Chapek made his comments on the reopening guidelines during an interview with CNBC’S “Closing Bell.”
“If you look at the history of Disney and what we’ve been able to do during the reopening — rather than arbitrary standards set up without regard to actual fact — and what we’ve been able to do as a company, I think you’d come to a different decision about reopening Disneyland,” he said.
Initial draft guidelines reportedly call for reopening individual California theme parks at 25% capacity once their county reaches the least-restrictive “minimal” risk level and limiting attendance to residents who live within 120 miles of each park.