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State Unemployment Departments Beef Up Call Centers and Tech Amidst COVID-19
One in five U.S. workers has filed for unemployment benefits since mid-March, totaling more than 33 million claims in the past seven weeks. With rates approaching Depression-era levels, states are scrambling to keep up with claims and call centers are completely overwhelmed.
In Wisconsin, "outdated technology" has been blamed for residents' inability to get assistance through the state's unemployment insurance helpline. The issue has held up some residents' benefits for weeks or more, but Wisconsin is working on upgrades, according to the Governor's office.
“The Department of Workforce Development has been hiring," said Ryan Nilsestuen, chief legal counsel to the governor, during a press call last week. "We’ve been transferring employees from other agencies to fill in DWD. DWD also did a significant technology upgrade to be able to handle a significantly larger number of callers and that helped a lot to make sure people weren’t being dropped and that they were able to answer more calls. And there’s going to continue to be those types of technology upgrades and additional employees and streamlining processes.”
More than 1.18 million weekly unemployment claims have been filed in Wisconsin since the COVID-19 pandemic began, and nearly half of them have not been paid, according to the DWD. The state still managed to pay out more than $290 million, despite the DWD call center being overwhelmed.
Nilsestuen said the department receives approximately four to five million calls per week, although a majority had been getting dropped before the technology upgrade. DWD staff have been working overtime since the onset of coronavirus to process claims, take calls and update IT and telecom processes to better meet demand.
Hundreds of state employees from other departments have already been transferred just to answer phone calls about unemployment insurance. And Wisconsin has also partnered with an additional 500-employee call center to help offset the deluge of calls. Agents are still being trained, however, and are expected to be ready for calls by mid-May.
Other states have faced similar problems handling unemployment queries because of COVID-19. The New York State Department of Labor and the New York State Office of Information Technology announced a "Tech Surge" last month, partnering with Google Cloud, Deloitte (News - Alert) and Verizon to improve online and telephone-based unemployment insurance systems.
Hawaii also launched a new call center to handle its overwhelming number of unemployment claims. And Michigan added more computer servers as well as hundreds of additional staff to answer phone calls related to an unprecedented number of unemployment claims.