Pennsylvania’s Department of Labor & Industry (L&I) on Wednesday told state representatives the commonwealth’s unemployment claim (UC) backlog remains vast at 31,304 cases.
L&I officials testifying at a hearing of the state House Appropriations Committee in preparation for next fiscal year’s budget also said state residents calling the department regarding UC claims face an average wait time of 67 minutes. Acting L&I Secretary Nancy Walker said her agency is making progress in clearing these cases, which reportedly numbered more than 35,000 last month. Such cases began to accumulate throughout the coronavirus outbreak.
Walker and senior members of her staff said that in September they hope to have no backlog and become poised to complete all new UC adjudications within 21 days.
Deputy Secretary for Unemployment Compensation Maria Macus asked lawmakers to recognize that her office endured a unique challenge after the lockdowns implemented in response to COVID-19 caused a massive upsurge in UC claims. Before the pandemic, she said, UC processing usually happened efficiently.
“While I understand that the pandemic is over, the volume of claims that came in has created this situation that we’re in now,” she said. “So, prior to March of 2020, we were doing pretty good with those performance measures: We were getting claims out, as they should be, in a timely manner; we were conducting fact-finding in a timely manner. And then March 2020 hit and the reality for our staff became very different.”
A number of representatives pleaded with Walker and her colleagues to take whatever measures they can to expedite responses on unprocessed claims, a problem many of their constituents have had to deal with over many months.
“Three years ago, I stood at this microphone, I picked up my phone and I called the Department of Labor & Industry and I got a busy signal just as I thought I would, just as I had a hundred times times before, because I wanted the department to hear that sound — the busy signal,” State Representative Natalie Mihalek (R-Bethel Park) told Walker. “I wanted the world to hear it, just as so many thousands of Pennsylvanians had heard when they dialed for their lifeline. Three years later, nothing’s changed.”
Mihalek said the UC backlog comes up every week in discussions with her staff about the most critical issues with which her district’s residents are contending. She said the claims people are trying to get resolved are not new ones but claims that were initiated sometime six months in the past and that entailed dozens of calls to the commonwealth to no avail.
The representative invited Walker and staff members to visit her district office to hear directly from those undergoing long waits for benefit determinations. The secretary responded that she would accept Mihalek’s invitation and agreed that the status quo was “just unacceptable.”
Pennsylvania’s current annual general-fund appropriation for L&I is approximately $555 million, an amount that Governor Josh Shapiro (D) wants to increase by $40 million in Fiscal Year 2023-24. Mihalek suggested that many lawmakers want assurance that present funds are well spent before hiking spending on the department.
The secretary told the representative that she became aware that numerous positions for intake interviewer — someone who obtains information from a UC claimant — were unfilled, and she can now report that those positions are all being staffed now. She added that another 135 individuals will step into similar roles this summer.
When Mihalek asked about copious new staffing that the department brought in during the pandemic to address unprocessed claims, Walker said those staffers came temporarily via assistance from the federal government.
“That leeway is gone and we are just with our own complement,” the secretary explained.
State Representative Clint Owlett (R-Wellsboro) seconded his Allegheny County-based colleagues, urging that L&I make every effort to expedite its work to manage pending UC cases.
“This is, I’ll say, ridiculous,” he said of the backlog. “This has to be better; I mean, these people are waiting, phone calls are coming into our offices, it’s not our jobs. I mean, we’re obviously wiling and able to help people but that is L&I’s job, it’s not our job.”
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Bradley Vasoli is managing editor of The Pennsylvania Daily Star. Follow Brad on Twitter at @BVasoli. Email tips to [email protected].
