WETHERSFIELD, Conn. — The CT Department of Labor released new numbers at its weekly briefing Thursday.
Since March 13, 2020, the DOL has paid out more than $751 million in unemployment claim payments and more than $1 billion in federal unemployment payments.
The CT DOL has received 567,000 applications for unemployment, of which 536,000 have been processed. That number equates to what is typically four years-worth of activity.
DOL Commissioner Kurt Westby says processing time is down to one to two weeks compared to up to six weeks just a short time ago. The DOL is hiring 60 new staff members, in addition to five staff members deployed this week to help with claimants experiencing problems such as lockouts.
Westby also announced a new state-of-the-art Contact Center that will be operational in mid-July. Sixty new hires will service all unemployment problems. It will have multiple live-person features, email, and a phone system, and it will be paid for by federal funding. The DOL is currently working on a contract with an outside vendor to run the Contact Center. Westby believes it will give claimants the attention they deserve.
During the weekly briefing, FOX61 asked your questions as part of our You Ask. We Answer. segment.
Question:
Jason wrote, “I have been watching the news for weeks now and decided to write to you. I had applied/made a claim for unemployment over five weeks ago and still have not received anything (no compensation) but an email three weeks ago saying “my claim was received.” I appreciate any help you can provide as my bills and mortgage keep rolling in, with no income.”
Answer:
While the DOL said it would be hard to pinpoint the exact problem with this claim, commissioners did give FOX61 general answers.
“We are very aware and FOX61 has been sharing my email, so I’ve been handling those personally. That scenario is not one I can give you an answer on because there’s so much behind it that I just don’t know. For example, you said he got an email saying he received an email we got the application. He actually should have received a second one, which said it was processing. I don’t know if he received that or check spam or his junk folder, but a second one comes in when they are in processing,” said Deputy Commissioner Danté Bartolomeo.
“We recognize that problem, and there are a lot of reasons as the Deputy Commissioner mentioned. We recently shifted staff from our processing unit since we got largely the processing under control. As I said before, we’re down to one, two weeks max for processing. We moved a dozen staffers to deal with issues like you are describing and another five from other areas to deal with issues like you’re describing,” said Commissioner Kurt Westby.
Question:
Jeffrey wrote, “I just received a letter from CT Dept of Labor stating I could be eligible for the 13-week COVID-19 unemployment extension. I followed the steps and made a new account, and when I submit it says error SSN already used. Just looking for answers.”
Answer:
Again, FOX61 was told that it’s hard to pinpoint what went wrong in this specific case.
“The thing that we’ve been finding with the social security when something like that happens, is that they’ve put that in incorrectly. I know most people would say, I know my social security number, I put it incorrectly, it’s just a simple matter if I’m using my smartphone, I’m very often hitting the wrong key because I have larger fingers, right? There’s putting it in wrong. There’s inverting numbers. Go back and look at that. I can tell you that when we were at about 500,000 applications, we had somebody analyze, we had 43,000 of those 500,000 had their social security number wrong,” said Deputy Commissioner Danté Bartolomeo.
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