Excerpted from Associated Press
The agency is working to merge the call centers and train more workers to handle complex calls to eliminate the need for call backs, Hilliard said. But she could not give a timeline for when that would happen despite repeated questions from Democratic Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie-Norris. Other lawmakers said it was unacceptable that so few workers are able to answer questions about claims over the phone.
“All of these timelines just seem totally out of step with the urgency of the moment that we are in,” Petrie-Norris said.
The department is experiencing vastly more claims than at the height of the Great Recession, when the most claims processed in a single month was around 115,000. During a single week in late March, the state processed more than 1 million claims, said Chas Alamo, a policy analyst at the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office. The federal government sets a goal of 87% of new claims being paid out within three weeks; California is currently paying out 62% of claims within that time frame, Alamo said. That's lower than the 50-state average.
Things could get even more complicated if Congress extends supplemental federal unemployment benefits, which gave people up to $600 in an additional weekly payments but just expired. The new program could require more complex calculations to determine payment amounts, and preparing the state's system to handle it could take 12 to 20 weeks, Hilliard said.
“I think that the level of outrage that you’re hearing today would be nothing compared with the level of outrage if we were to tell the people of California it was going to take almost half a year to process their federal unemployment insurance supplement," said Republican Assemblyman Jay Obernolte.
The strike team Newsom created will have 45 days to produce a report on how to make the agency more digital and consumer friendly. The agency will also begin weekly outreach to applicants who need to send in more information or certify their claims, which much be done every two weeks.