Three million Californians should start getting long awaited unemployment benefits by the end of the week.
That's according to Sharon Hilliard, head of the Employment Development Department. Her department has started accepting new claims again after a two-week pause intended to make critical updates to the backlogged and outdated system.
This summer, some applicants were waiting four to six weeks just to get a call back from the department.
San Francisco Assemblyman David Chiu says it was meant to, “implement identify verification technology that hopefully will mean that rather than 40% of all applicants being stalled in the application process while claims are being reviewed manually - that number should go down to less than 10% with this new software."
The hope is that it will help the department get through the 1.6 million applications still outstanding.
Chiu is on the subcommittee that is set to hear from Hilliard today about the updates, although lawmakers are somewhat skeptical that the EDD’s longstanding issues could be addressed in just two weeks.
The pause was triggered by a report from the Governor’s strike force appointed to discover why claims were being held up for months. Chiu says the EDD was underestimating the amount of claims that had yet to be processed until the report came out.
“The administration said that they didn’t think it’d be cleared out until the end of January,” he said. “Incredibly frustrating, really unacceptable. I’ve been worried that this is too little too late for Californians struggling, awaiting benefits in the pandemic.”
Hilliard is also expected to face tough questions about recent reports of people filing fraudulent claims, which may have led to some legitimate applicants losing their benefits.
The EDD says it is underfunded and understaffed to keep up with the deluge of claims stemming from the pandemic.