Jun 5, 2020 2 min read

Pennsylvania’s pandemic-induced unemployment rate soared to 15.1% in April. So it’s no surprise that Labor & Industry’s virtual town halls are eliciting dozens of calls.

There are a lot of idled employees with a lot of questions, especially about unemployment benefits, payment delays, electronic glitches and the alphabet soups of UC, PUA, PEUC and FPUC.

About two dozen residents from across the state got through Thursday for the latest town hall, featuring department Secretary Jerry Oleksiak and Susan Dickinson, director of the Office of Unemployment Compensation Benefits Policy. Dickinson handled virtually all of the queries, patiently admitting several times that the system can be complicated. And, with her office under siege, she recommended that claimants and applicants help themselves as much as they can by accessing the unemployment compensation website (www.uc.pa.gov), email uchelp@pa.gov or go to the L&I Live Chat.

Dickinson said additional hires have diminished the backlog of claims and issues, but acknowledged that L&I is still plagued by computer issues. She also reiterated a point she has made several times: apply for UC benefits only for the time you are not working, and only the days you did work if employment is sporadic.

Oleksiak talked about the national scam that filtered into Pennsylvania, with out-of-state scammers applying for Pennsylvania UC benefits through the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program. He said his department has been working with federal and state officials on the matter, and that safeguards have been added. Oleksiak assured that no systems or data have been compromised in the state.

Here are the weekly figures, since mid-March, courtesy of L&I:

• Claimants have received more than $12.3 billion in benefits ($6.9 billion from regular UC; $4.6 billion from FPUC; $783 million from PUA; $11 million from PEUC);
• 2.4 million total unemployment compensation claims have been filed (two million for regular UC, 452,000 for PUA);
• UC has added 312 new staff (for a total of 1,491) and added 358 reassigned state employees;
• 208,000 calls have been answered by IBM Watson, an automated virtual phone assistant taking common UC questions.