Officials said California’s Employment Development Department is working on getting unemployment checks to those who are waiting, but the backlog won’t be resolved until late January.
The COVID-19 pandemic put more than 12 million Californians out of work, and the crisis overwhelmed the department, outraging claimants.
At a state Senate Committee on Labor, Public Employment and Retirement hearing, Carol Williams of the new EDD management team said 28 of 100 recommendations from a governor’s strike-force have been met.
“Over 424,000 of those individuals are no longer waiting,” Williams said. “We are on track to illuminate the backlog by January 2021.”
It’s not only been tough on claimants, but on EDD workers too, the formally unemployed Irene Green explained.
“We went from working an eight hour workday five days a week, to working seven days per week up to 14 hours a day,” Green added.
The EDD hired thousands of workers, however, managers said properly training new employees can take years.
It promised to make filing on a mobile devices much easier and automated the ID verification process to cut fraud.
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