Delayed unemployment payments set to be cleared in coming days, department chief says
Washington’s Employment Security Department on Thursday said it has made strides in working through its backlog of claims, reducing it by nearly 75 percent.
“This past week, for the first time since the pandemic began, all initial claim types as well as continued and ongoing weekly claims decreased,” said ESD Commissioner Suzi LeVine in a news release. “We are making excellent progress on our efforts to resolve the claims for those who have been waiting the longest.”
Unanswered claims with adjudication issues dating back six weeks up to 18 weeks now number 20,518, according to LeVine, down from 37,371 earlier this month and 81,508 as of mid-June.
LeVine said at a Thursday news briefing those claimants should be cleared from adjudication in eight days, and the target date of completion remains July 31.
That group includes those who filed between between March 8 and June 18.
“And while we are on track to resolving those remaining ... it is going to be tight to meet our targets,” LeVine said.
She added, “Many of these that are left are complex, and reaching customers can be a challenge, but we’re keeping our nose to the grindstone.”
LeVine and the department have provided regular updates with shifting timelines in its “Operation 100 Percent” program to clear the backlog, leaving many people in doubt.
“Normal citizens can’t get any answers, and we are desperate,” wrote Carolyn Harrold in an email to The News Tribune this week.
Harrold discussed with The News Tribune earlier this month not receiving payments, at that time having already waited 11 weeks.
As of Wednesday, she’d still not received any payments.
“They said they would help us by June 15. Then by July 6. Then by July 15,” she wrote on Wednesday, adding her claim is among “the oldest 10,000 waiting.”
The backlog of claims stems from both the flood of claims that hit the department starting in March as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, and then later when criminals targeted the state with fraudulent claims.
To date, the department says it has recovered $368 million in funds out of an estimated $550 million to $650 million lost to fraud.
Later Thursday, Gov. Jay Inslee weighed in on the backlog during his own news conference on the state’s COVID-19 response.
“Everything humanly possible that could be done is being done to get unemployment insurance to people, I can tell you that,” Inslee said.
He acknowledged that those still waiting “are an extreme distress, they are extremely frustrated and I share that frustration.”
Inslee added the state still needed to follow law governing the distribution of payments, “which doesn’t allow the department just to send checks to everybody who asked for it; they have to look at the data to determine whether or not there is actually a right to those funds.”
He also noted the National Guard troops assigned to the department to help with the ID vetting process had “fulfilled their mission to clear those ID people in that queue.”
Loss of $600 payments looms
LeVine emphasized in Thursday’s briefing that a significant reduction in most people’s payments is on the way unless changes are made at the federal level.
On July 25, the extra $600 a week tacked on to payments to most claimants via the federal CARES Act is set to expire unless it receives an extension by Congress.
“We’re following the situation at the federal level closely and will continue to share information with claimants and the public as we learn more,” she said.
“Please do not call us,” she added. “We’ll be reaching out to keep claimants updated, and they should look in their E-Services account.”
For those still in the queue waiting to be paid, LeVine made clear that the $600 payments would still be paid to those claimants in what they are owed retroactively.
By the numbers
ESD in its roundup of weekly claims said Thursday that during the week of July 12-18, there were 29,438 initial regular unemployment claims filed, down 27.3 percent from the previous week, and 673,444 total claims for all unemployment benefit categories, down 4.7 percent from the previous week filed in the state.
Initial regular claims filed in Pierce County decreased from 5,022 to 3,781 from the previous week.
ESD has paid out more than $8.1 billion in benefits since early March, and that 945,044 individuals who have filed an initial claim have been paid.
This story was originally published July 24, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
