Backlog of jobless claims shrinks, still over 1 million

The mammoth backlog of unemployment claims that have buried California’s troubled labor agency amid coronavirus-linked business shutdowns and huge numbers of layoffs has begun to shrink a bit, a government report indicated Thursday.

As of Oct. 7, the backlog of unemployment claims that the state government has been attempting to work through was roughly 1.34 million — a giant number, but considerably less than what it has been.

About a week ago, as of Sept. 30, the backlog was about 1.56 million, according to official dashboards posted by the state’s Employment Development Department.

That works out to a decrease of about 222,000 in the size of the backlog, or a decline of 14 percent in a week, this news organization’s analysis of the EDD’s dashboards shows.

The backlog results from two major categories of workers, those whose initial claims haven’t been processed, and those who are having difficulties with their continuing claims.

As of Oct. 7, according to the EDD: — 889,900 people had received a single payment but now have been forced to wait more than 21 days to receive a second payment or be disqualified from receiving any more benefits. That’s a decrease of 132,000, or 13 percent fewer, than the Sept. 30 totals for this category.

— 451,700 people have filed an initial claim but have been forced to wait more than 21 days to either receive the first payment or be notified that they don’t qualify for any jobless benefits. That’s a decrease of 90,100 or 17 percent compared with the Sept. 30 totals for this group.

The state EDD on Monday instituted a new tool to verify the identifies of an applicant for unemployment benefits. The tool is designed to automate key segments of the process to authorize payments of jobless claims filed by California workers.

“The EDD believes the implementation of our new ID.me identity verification technology, which launched on Monday at the front end of our application process, will allow us to more quickly authenticate legitimate claimants and help EDD process their claims faster,” the EDD said Thursday.