Some progress in jobless claims but for those still waiting, ‘It’s kind of terrifying’
State Employment Security Department Commissioner Suzi LeVine announced Thursday that about $333 million has been recovered from false jobless claims so far, out of an estimated $550 million to $650 million loss.
LeVine said both the amounts recovered and amount lost would likely change.
Amid the progress, the department in general and LeVine specifically continue to face backlash from filers over delayed claims, some still not paid from the start of the pandemic and statewide “Stay Home Stay Safe” order, which shuttered businesses deemed nonessential.
“We hear you, and we take to heart every one of the thousands of messages we’ve received,” LeVine said at Thursday’s news briefing, adding the department was “entirely focused on how we can do better.”
“There are far too many who’ve been waiting for far too long.”
For the week of May 24, the department saw 31,224 initial regular unemployment claims filed, down 36 percent from the previous week, and 774,959 total claims for all unemployment benefit categories were filed, a decrease of 155,423.
In Pierce County alone, initial regular claims were down 36 percent from the week before — from 6,348 to 4,069.
The department credits the slowdown to a variety of reasons, including fraud prevention measures “and more people going back to work with the reopening of some industry sectors and regions over the past three weeks,” according to its Thursday morning news release.
The fraud investigation over false filings that swarmed the statewide system and entities in Pierce County has resulted in a sharp slowdown of claims processed, following an already slow process involving an overwhelmed system with new filings since March.
Many claimants still are waiting to be processed and vetted as part of the department’s enhanced ID fraud check. That number, around 215,000 in May, is set to be down to 90,000 in the next few days, according to LeVine.
The department’s Operation 100 Percent, launched May 11 to resolve initial claims dating back before May 1, faces another two-week delay as part of the added scrutiny to making sure claims are not fraudulent.
The initial target date was mid-June. As of June 1, more than 40,000 were still in some kind of adjudication process, down from an initial 57,125.
The state has paid 826,123 individual claims totaling $4.9 billion as of May 30.
At the same time, the wait has become agonizing for those caught in limbo of either ID vetting, adjudication or something else.
Tami Jackson was a Clover Park School District substitute teacher whose job went away as a result of the statewide school closures. Jackson told The News Tribune this week she’s had to borrow from her daughter to make it through the month after her payments abruptly stopped.
Looking online, she noticed the payments were redirected to a bank account that she says was not hers.
“They said it was my account, but it’s not,” she said. She reported the issue and said, “Now I’m locked out of my account.”
An ESD representative told The News Tribune this week that anyone who was a victim of fraud who needed to access benefits “will be sent a message giving them instruction on how to ‘reclaim’ their account.”
Thursday afternoon, she did receive a form email response that unfortunately didn’t address her specific circumstance.
She has yet to get through to the call center.
“It’s kind of terrifying,” she said.
This story was originally published June 4, 2020 at 1:12 PM with the headline "Some progress in jobless claims but for those still waiting, ‘It’s kind of terrifying’."
