California’s Unemployment Averages 27 percent of All U.S. Claims
‘The Governor should have people working around the clock to fix this problem’

By Katy Grimes, September 22, 2020 8:07 am

Since Gov. Gavin Newsom shutdown California businesses in mid-March, Californians have filed 8.6 million total new claims for unemployment.

In the age group of working Californians, ages 18-65, this is a rate of 39% of unemployed, higher than at the peak of the Depression in the 1920’s which was 24.9%.

Notably, California has approximately 12% of the nation’s workforce, and one in three of the nation’s welfare recipients.

California’s unemployment averages 27 percent of all claims for unemployment in the United States.

Instead of turning 20,000 California state workers into Coronavirus contact tracers, the governor should have moved them over to the EDD to process unemployment claims.

California Unemployment benefits top $86 billion since March Shutdown
Now Governor Newsom’s Employment Development Department Strike Team issued a new report that shows nearly 1.6 million claims have not beed resolved, dating back to March and April of this year and the backlog is growing by 10,000 a day.

The governor also announced that the EDD will be taking a two-week break to overhaul and update the current system, while also halting all new claims until October 5th, California Globe reported Monday.

“We worked through the weekend to do just that,” Newsom said during a press conference Monday. “I didn’t want to wait another day to start this reset.”

This “reset” couldn’t come at a worse time, with the state still under business lockdown restrictions.

“This is unacceptable,” said Sen. John Moorlach (R-Costa Mesa). “The private sector would work on parallel tracks – use business hours to meet the needs of customers and the nonbusiness hours to reboot and modernize the internal systems.”

[californiaglobe.com]