UPDATE (12/23/2020): Wait times for unemployment claims continue to grow worse: ESD is now reporting it is taking the state more than two weeks to pay unemployment benefits to eligible workers whose claims do not have any issues — and nearly ten weeks for claims where ESD does have issues. That means the average straightforward claim filed today won’t get paid until mid-January. And the people with flagged claims who finally got paid this week? On average they filed those claims in first half of October. Table below is updated with the latest data.
After Washington State tightened COVID health restrictions the week before Thanksgiving, more than $100 million in new assistance has been provided to impacted business owners. Meanwhile, no new dollars have been earmarked for direct cash assistance to impacted workers. And while we should be able to depend on the unemployment system to step up and fill some of the gap, federal data reported by the Department of Labor shows that only 52.6% of newly unemployed people in WA are getting their benefits within three weeks. In other words: about half of people who lost work under these new restrictions still have not received their benefits today, three weeks after they took effect.
Workers need relief now — and workers' needs deserve to be treated with the same urgency as those of business owners.
You may recall that at the beginning of August, after intense public pressure over long delays in the unemployment system, ESD announced they they had completed what they called "Operation 100%, " their effort to catch up on their backlog.
At that point this summer they reported that it was taking an average of 12.3 days for people without issues in their claims to receive their first payment, and 4 weeks to resolve claims that had issues. These numbers have crept back up since the department's declaration of victory, and the long delays in receiving income support continue to impact public health.
Archived data from the state’s dashboard reports show the alarming trend.
August 1st:
12.3 days to pay claims without issues
4 weeks to pay claims with issues
September 12th:
12.7 days to pay claims without issues
6.3 weeks to pay claims with issues
October 10th:
12.8 days to pay claims without issues
8.4 weeks to pay claims with issues
November 7th:
13.3 days to pay claims without issues
9.4 weeks to pay claims with issues
December 5th:
13.3 days to pay claims without issues
9.7 weeks to pay claims with issues
December 19th:
14.3 days to pay claims without issues
9.8 weeks to pay claims with issues
In short: in the four months since ESD announced they had completed their backlog, their time to pay simple claims without issues has crept up by a day, and their time to resolve claims with issues — the claims which created the very backlog they were attempting to resolve — has more than doubled from 4 weeks to almost 10 weeks.
This matters to the entire state, because economic security is a public health issue. Workers at high risk for COVID, or who are being pushed by irresponsible managers to work in unsafe conditions, need to know that if they have to stop working to stay healthy, they'll still have income to be able to support themselves. The ongoing issues with ESD do not provide this assurance — and things are again getting worse as we look at a new wave of claims.
When it comes to business relief, the state does recognize the need for speedy action to provide relief now when it’s most needed. Businesses which apply for new state grants are allowed to self-attest that they meet certain eligibility criteria, and if they apply now and are approved they can be certain they will receive a check by the end of the year.
Meanwhile, if you're an unemployed person who files a claim, the data shows you only have about a 50/50 chance of seeing any money by the end of the year — and the numbers keep getting worse. If ESD flags your claim with an issue of some kind — for example, if your employer is slow to respond or doesn’t cooperate — you can expect it will take almost 10 weeks to get paid. In other words, if you lose your job today, you might expect to go without income until February 11th, one month into the 2021 legislative session.
We need to do better than this. We need to appreciate that economic security is central to public health. And we need to treat human beings at least as well as we treat corporations.