You could be waiting months if you need an interview with EDD about unemployment

If you require a phone interview to see if you’re eligible for unemployment benefits, you may have to wait up to 26 weeks for someone at the state’s Employment Development Department to talk with you.

Such interviews are necessary if EDD has questions about whether you quit your job or were fired. Or whether you accurately reported your income and other eligibility criteria, or if you could be involved in a scheme to falsely claim benefits.

For those and other reasons, EDD requires that you have a call with an agency official to determine if you qualify for weekly payments from the eligibility-based unemployment insurance program.

The agency has been cold-calling some people when it thinks an issue can be resolved quickly without having to schedule a phone interview, but many will have to wait.

The wait, detailed to state legislative staff in a recent call with EDD officials, is the latest chapter in the ongoing saga of consumer frustration with the agency that manages the unemployment program.

“EDD just goes from one backlog to another. The one thing that remains true with all these backlogs is an undercurrent of incompetency. EDD has hurt a lot of good people who have yet to be paid what they are owed,” said Assemblyman Jim Patterson, R-Fresno, who has been active in efforts to reform the agency.

Almost since the Covid pandemic began 19 months ago, EDD has been overwhelmed by an unprecedented volume of claims. Claims and benefits paid recently have dropped significantly, notably since federally funded benefits ended last month.

A total of $2.1 billion was paid in benefits during the week ending September 11, the week the last of the federal benefit programs expired. In the week ending October 9, the state paid $419 million in benefits.

But EDD officials believe that the end of the federal benefits increased their workload, as people sought regular unemployment benefits to see if they qualified. Regular benefits are provided by states and are paid to eligible people who worked for an employer. The employer pays unemployment insurance taxes, which funds the regular benefits.

Long wait for California benefits

Patience Tshimika thought getting new benefits would be easy after the coronavirus pandemic meant she lost her contract last spring as a French teacher in Fresno schools.

She got help from EDD at first, and got payments for about a year, but the benefits for her program ended. EDD in May asked her to reapply so she could get new benefits, and she did.

Then she waited. And waited. “I never heard anything back. No email saying they got the claim, no communication at all,” she said. Finally, three months later, she contacted Patterson’s office.

Suddenly, EDD said they’d interview her in early October, five months after she first applied. When they called, Tshimika said, “they said they called me because Patterson’s office contacted them.” She got back pay stretching to May.

She also got a bruising lesson in dealing with EDD. “I was honest from the get-go. I reported how I received income the first time I applied, so why was this even an issue?” she asked. This was the first time she’d ever sought unemployment.

“People like me get hurt because I don’t understand how their system works and they don’t take time to explain the system works,” Tshimika said.

EDD does not comment on individual cases.

EDD’s unemployment effort

EDD spokeswoman Loree Levy explained that overall, the people needing interviews are “folks who have eligibility issues on either their initial claim or on a continued claim form once they already have a claim established. Luckily most people don’t experience such an issue.”

About 85% of new claimants get a first payment issued within roughly one week of submitting their required certification confirming they’re eligible.

Levy said the agency is taking swift action to address the backlog.

This summer, it began paying benefits right away to people with established claims pending more than two weeks who also required an interview. Hundreds of thousands of people have received such conditional payments while the EDD works to resolve the eligibility issue on the claim.

Levy explained EDD can issue conditional payments for those who have a claim established and are in continued claim status so they can at least get paid while they wait for an eligibility determination.

EDD is also adding more staff — something it’s been doing for about a year and a half — and training 200 employees to handle the interviews’ most common issues.

The most apparent issue that triggers an interview involves establishing why a person left a job when they quit or were fired. That’s “time consuming work because it requires speaking with both the employer and employee,” Levy said.

Another common issue involves EDD records where an employer’s wage report doesn’t match what the claimant says.

“These are examples of the more complex cases that always take more time to resolve in every state, whether we are in a recession or not,” Levy said.