OKLAHOMA CITY – Almost 120,800 initial claims for unemployment compensation were filed with the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission (OESC) during the three-week period between March 16 and April 3, the agency reported Thursday.
Oklahoma continues to parallel the nation in the extraordinary number of initial claims for unemployment insurance as COVID-19-related closures and declines in the oil patch put more people out of work.
Unadjusted initial claims filed with the OESC during the week ending April 4 totaled 51,124. That surpassed the 47,744 initial claims filed the week before, which more than doubled the 21,926 claims filed the week before that. All three numbers were records.
The previous highest week for initial claims was 9,778 for the week ending Jan. 12, 1991, OESC ledgers extending back to 1987 reflect.
The advance unadjusted number for continued claims April 4 totaled 54,469, nearly double the number from the previous week.
The flood of new claims has swamped phone lines as individuals seek relief to make up for wages lost through the closing of businesses to help slow the spread of COVID-19, OESC Executive Director Robin Roberson said.
To address the tsunami of claims, OESC has “ramped up” then number of employees available to assist
callers and is “actively working to improve its processes to handle the record spike in calls” to the agency, Roberson said.
Since the OESC office is closed, agency employees are working from home, Chief of Staff Cyndi Phillips confirmed. Unemployment claims must be filed online, and questions are being answered by scores of newly hired personnel.
“OESC has expanded its Tier One call center service agents to 214,” Ms. Phillips reported Friday. “As many as 500 should be trained and available for handling initial calls” by April 17, she said. Additional training is continuing “to increase the number of Tier Two service agents who can handle the more technical aspects of an Unemployment Insurance claim,” Ms. Phillips said.
Additionally, the agency has expanded its bandwidth, “which should eliminate previous issues with error pages or downtime,” she said. “The site is now capable of handling tens of thousands of requests per minute without interruption.”
“People are worried. They’re frightened. They’re uncertain about how they’re going to provide for their families,” Roberson said. “We want them to know we hear them and we’re going to work with them to get the relief they need.”
The OESC held a “virtual Town Hall” Friday afternoon for an estimated 50,000 claimants and the general public to provide answers to questions about unemployment insurance, the claims filing process, and other topics.
Nationally, seasonally adjusted initial claims totaled 6,606,000, a decrease of 261,000 from the previous week’s revised level of 6,867,000.
This marks the second highest level of seasonally adjusted initial claims in the history of this series, federal officials reported.
Out-of-work Oklahomans are encouraged to file initial claims online. The OESC phone systems continue to be overloaded despite an increase of 100 claims agents – a number that should double in the next week as the capability of the call center continues to be expanded, Roberson said.
“The U.S. Department of Labor is in the process of finalizing its guidance on funds made available through the CARES Act for non-traditional workers,” Roberson said recently. “We’re optimistic these funds will be available in the next week. CARES funds will be backdated to March 30, 2020, to assist gig workers, independent contractors, and other self-employed individuals seeking relief.”
The new federal law expands the number of weeks of unemployment available to individuals affected by COVID-19 related eligibility standards. It also increases the amount of funds an individual may receive weekly over the state’s established maximum payment for unemployment insurance.
The one-week waiting period to file for unemployment has been waived for first-time claimants, Roberson said. The state also waived the Benefit Wage Charge for employers with allowed claims directly related to COVID-19 closure or workforce reduction, she said.