Fewer people in NC are waiting on unemployment benefits, but the relief is temporary
Updated July 3, 7 p.m. See story for details.
For many North Carolinians applying for unemployment benefits during the pandemic, the process has been characterized by painstaking delays, computer glitches and unreturned phone calls.
The Division of Employment Security is still struggling to make it through the backlog, with nearly 45,000 claims pending. The recent numbers, though, suggest the backlog of unmet claims for unemployment benefits is shrinking.
According to DES, over 1.1 million North Carolinians applied for unemployment benefits between March 15 and June 30. Over 765,000 have received benefits, with 4% of claims pending. Of those who applied, over 230,000 have been deemed not eligible for benefits because they did not have sufficient wage history to receive benefits or earned too much to receive benefits, among other eligibility criteria.
The gap has shrunk during the pandemic between the number of claims and the number that have been met. In mid-April 630,000 claims had been filed, but only 211,672 people had been paid.
N.C. Sen. Wiley Nickel, a Democrat representing western Wake County, said his office was inundated with calls from constituents struggling to get a response from DES.
“It was, ‘I can’t get through, no one’s responding,’ and we would go in and literally help each person with DES and push to get to someone who could help them,” Wiley told The News & Observer in a phone interview.
By mid-May, the calls started tapering off as DES made it through some of the backlog. On May 22, over 930,000 claims were filed, and 573,736 had been paid.
The narrowing gap is partially a result of fewer new people applying for benefits. From March 15 to April 23, DES received approximately 18,000 claims a day. That decreased in June, with the daily average at 12,264.
The decrease mirrors national trends. The U.S. unemployment rate dropped from 13.3% in May to 11.1% in June, according to data released Thursday. Though the Associated Press notes the data was collected before states renewed their reopening restrictions to slow the spread of COVID-19.
In North Carolina, a major staffing increase at DES helped winnow the gap, too. The agency now has a staff of 2,600, up from just 500 employees in early March. The low staff numbers date back to 2013, when GOP lawmakers gutted the unemployment program, completely eliminating state appropriations for unemployment program administration and forcing the program to rely on declining federal funds
Slow to administer benefits
Though the unemployment office has caught up on some of the backlog, it’s still struggling to keep up. According to data from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment & Training Administration, North Carolina continues to rank low in timeliness of benefits delivery.
Between April and June, 66.9% of applicants received benefits within 14 days, compared with a national average of 73.3%.
North Carolina’s first payment timeliness rate — the number of days between the end of the first compensable week to receipt of payment — has remained about the same as before the pandemic, while the national average has dropped dramatically from 91.6%. Before the pandemic started, it was the lowest in the country.
Thursday, DES issued a weekly report about its unemployment claims and said claims are divided into three time periods of when they were filed. A team dedicated to “resolving claims filed earliest in the COVID-19 pandemic and the most complicated claims” has resolved all 28,000 claims from March 15 to April 18.
That leaves a little over 31,000 from April 19 through the present.
Experts say the biggest unemployment crisis is yet to hit North Carolina. Federal benefits under the CARES Act, which has provided applicants of unemployment benefits an additional $600 a week, are set to expire at the end of July, leaving North Carolina residents to make do with the lowest state benefits in the country. At the end of 2019, the average weekly benefit in North Carolina was $277, while the national average was $378.
“The pandemic has shown how states like North Carolina, if workers had to rely on the benefits that states would have provided them, they wouldn’t have been able to make it,” said Bill Rowe, deputy director of advocacy at the North Carolina Justice Center, a progressive policy organization.
“The federal government has in some ways masked what the problems are in North Carolina, but when that program ends at the end of July we’re back to the system we had for the last seven years,” Rowe told The News & Observer in a phone interview.
While Wiley’s office has stopped receiving calls from constituents frustrated with DES delays and lack of transparency, he’s now fielding calls from people with longer-term concerns.
“Now it’s more like, ‘I’m really concerned because my benefits are ending and what am I going to do to pay my bills on Aug. 1?” Nickel said. “The situation is very dire for jobless workers in North Carolina right now.”
This story was originally published July 2, 2020 at 12:56 PM with the headline "Fewer people in NC are waiting on unemployment benefits, but the relief is temporary."
