Gov. Newsom said California would fix its unemployment backlog by now. Where does it stand?
Gov. Gavin Newsom said in July he “anticipates eliminating the backlog of actionable (unemployment) claims by the end of September. “
As of October 14, the state had a backlog of 1.2 million claims, up from 1.1 million when Newsom made his announcement.
And it’ll probably be January before the current backlog is cleared, Employment Development Department Director Sharon Hilliard told an Assembly subcommittee earlier this month.
It’s all another chapter in the ongoing, confusing saga of the unemployment claims backlog, one that’s vexed and frustrated state lawmakers for months as they try to explain to frustrated constituents why it’s sometimes taking a long time to get answers.
Part of the reason a backlog persists is that new claims keep pouring in and the overwhelmed department is still trying to deal with an unprecedented volume of business. The agency logged 246,399 new claims submitted in the week ending October 10, up from 209,960 the previous week.
While the backlog appears to be better managed, lawmakers are still wary.
“I hope you can understand we may lack some confidence in understanding and believing that this is the size of the backlog and when it’s (going to) get cleared,” Assemblyman David Chiu, D-San Francisco, told Hilliard at the hearing.
The breakdown and current status of those July claims:
▪ 239,000 awaiting action. About 210,000 have been resolved. Another 29,000 have not and are part of the current backlog.
▪ 889,000 where no further action could be taken unless the claimant either completed the requirement of certifying for benefits, or provided further wage information to help establish a claim.
The department launched a program aimed at helping these people. As a result:
▪ 385,000 of them responded with information that verified their eligibility.
▪ 354,000 never responded.
▪ 150,000 became mired in new issues that need attention. For example, Employment Development Department spokeswoman Loree Levy said, after certifying, a claimant may have indicated they refused an offer to work, so officials have to determine if they’re eligible for benefits.
Lawmakers question numbers
Lawmakers continue to seethe as they try to understand the numbers.
“We were never able to get an upfront answer from you about the size of the backlog,” Chiu told Hilliard at an Oct. 7 budget subcommittee hearing.
After HIlliard described the current backlog, he asked her “Are you fully confident this is the size of the backlog and that it’s going to be cleared by the end of January?”
Hilliard said she was “feeling very good about the last two weeks.” as thousands of claims have been resolved.
Chiu and other lawmakers remained wary, citing the report on Employment Development Department operations last month from Newsom’s strike force. The strike force, a team of advisers that issued its report Sept. 19, found that when it began its work, “the backlog was growing unbounded.”
It offered recommendations to improve operations, and found “the work they are doing now to address the backlog with a data-driven plan will serve as an excellent platform for this culture shift, especially because it has such strong leadership support.“
One of the Strike Team’s recommendations, installing the ID.me identity verification tool in the online application process, is already making a big difference in driving down the manual workload that creates a backlog, the department says.
$101 billion in unemployment benefits
The Employment Development Department has been deluged for months by an unprecedented number of people seeking benefits. Since the pandemic sent the economy reeling in March, it has paid $101 billion and processed 15.2 million claims.
Newsom made his July 29 backlog statement on the same day Hilliard wrote a detailed letter to Labor Secretary Julie Su explaining where things stood.
Hilliard said then July about 1.1 million claims were pending. Many have since been resolved, but new claims keep pouring in, helping keep the backlog up.
When questioned about the ever-changing numbers, Hilliard told the budget subcommittee the agency now had a much more inclusive way of compiling the backlog data. “That’s why it grew so much larger,” she said.
The figures released as part of a backlog at the end of July reflected those claimants who had not received a payment. While two-thirds of what’s referred to in a combined backlog figure today includes those who have already received at least one payment in continued claim status but are now waiting more than 21 days for processing of further payment or disqualification.
In short, Hilliard said, there’s no magic formula for clearing the backlog. “The work is very complex and complicated,” she said.
This story was originally published October 22, 2020 at 11:01 AM with the headline "Gov. Newsom said California would fix its unemployment backlog by now. Where does it stand?."
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