The agency stopped taking inbound calls on Mondays last June and cut the number of hours the phones were open by one hour each in the mornings and afternoons. At the time, it was facing a growing backlog of jobless claims and jammed phone lines as laid-off workers sought information about their stalled benefits.
By reducing phone hours, the employment department said it could devote more time to processing claims and resolving issues that stood in the way of it paying benefits. The change affected both jobless insurance claims and the new Paid Leave Oregon benefits program, which is also administered by the employment department.
The shorter phone hours confounded some unemployed Oregonians, who couldn’t get through on the phone lines to find out why they weren’t receiving their aid.
In June, more than a third of callers to the employment department spent over an hour on hold. Many others couldn’t get through at all.
Hold times began dropping, though, as the employment department finally began making progress on unresolved claims. The number of people on hold for an hour or more fell to 25% in August, the lowest point in a year — though some callers still get a busy signal or are immediately disconnected when lines are especially slammed.
The employment department blamed its declining performance on a falloff in federal pandemic funding, which prompted a steep reduction in the number of staffers processing claims.
August was the first month that the employment department had 70 new staff to process claims. Their positions were funded out of a $45 million allocation from the state Legislature this year.
Meanwhile, the employment department has resumed paying the vast majority of claims within three weeks. That’s the federal standard for timely payments.
Oregon paid 76% of unemployment claims within three weeks in August, according to the latest federal data, up from just 54% in April.
The employment department said this week that it is resolving issues with claims much faster than it did in the spring and is confident that it will continue making progress.
Daily hours remain shorter, though; the phone lines are open daily from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
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