More than 1 million unemployed in Pennsylvania since the start of coronavirus shutdowns
As of Monday morning, 1.1 million Pennsylvanians have become unemployed as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, which means about 16% of the commonwealth’s workforce is without a job.
That so many people have become unemployed so quickly is record shattering, according to Jerry Oleksiak, the commonwealth’s secretary for the Department of Labor and Industry. To put it in perspective, in the week before restrictions started to be put in place because of the coronavirus, only 40,000 Pennsylvanians filed for unemployment benefits.
In a conference call with reporters Monday afternoon, Oleksiak and Susan Dickinson, the director of unemployment compensation benefits policy, suggested the system could handle the flood of applicants, even if phone lines have been jammed in recent days. They explained that additional staff were being added to try to meet the demand, with some former employees being pulled out of retirement to help with the deluge.
“I know people are frustrated when they call in,” Oleksiak said. “We are responding as effectively as we can.”
He urged displaced workers seeking information go to www.uc.pa.gov/unemployment-benefits and start the process there.
Dickinson said right now there is a roughly 11-day lag time between when claims are initially made and when they are processed. The claims are processed in the order in which they are received.
“We’re working as diligently as possible,” she said. “It is definitely a record … No one could have seen it coming.”
Oleksiak had no specific information yet on which counties or industries had been hardest hit. He also said 333 workers compensation claims had been filed in Harrisburg since mid-March, with 132 of those related to the coronavirus outbreak and made by health-care workers and first-responders.
A new system for filing claims is due to be put in place in the fall. Oleksiak conceded that what is in place right now is between 40 and 50 years old, and “it’s an effort to keep it functional.”
“Our IT people have been working wonders to keep it going,” he said.
Pennsylvania workers who file for unemployment will receive an additional $600 per week placed in their bank accounts as a result of the $2 trillion stimulus package, and Dickinson explained they do not need to file for that benefit separately.