NC unemployment delays have been a disaster. Own it, Gov. Cooper

North Carolina’s unemployment system is a disaster right now. Hundreds of thousands of people aren’t getting their benefits. They’ve waited as long as two months instead of the two weeks that’s typical. They’re getting little to no information from the state unemployment office, and their governor is not doing a whole lot better.

At a news conference last week, Roy Cooper said he knows N.C. families need help and doesn’t think the state unemployment office has done enough. “I am pushing them to move faster,” the governor said. That’s a little too close to blame shifting for North Carolinians who desperately need their benefits. The governor needs to own this problem, address it, and fix it.

Let’s be clear: North Carolina is far from the only state having difficulty handling the surge in unemployment claims caused by the outbreak of COVID-19 and the very necessary stay-at-home restrictions that followed. As NBC News reported late last week, only 56% of those across the country who have applied for unemployment insurance are receiving benefits, according to an analysis by One Fair Wage, a nonprofit organization that advocates for restaurant workers. N.C. data shows that slightly more than half of the people to have filed for unemployment so far have started getting paid.

Some states, including California and Texas, are having greater success paying benefits. Others, like Washington State, are seeing the system wilt under the massive crush of unemployment claims. A common thread: States, including North Carolina, were slow to anticipate the surge and increase staffing to necessary levels.

But this also is true: People in North Carolina don’t want excuses or care how other states are doing. They need money to pay bills and housing costs, to put food on the table. At the least, they need to know what’s going on. In North Carolina, communication is sparse and it’s too difficult to get a human on the phone. “AND, it’s not enough to just answer the phone,” N.C. Sen. Jeff Jackson, a Mecklenburg Democrat, said in an email to constituents Sunday. “They have to make sure the person who answers can actually help. And that’s been an issue.”

In his email and on Twitter, Jackson explained that the state’s Department of Employment Security is getting an average of 50,000 calls a day, yet has 1,100 employees handling the calls (with 350 more coming Monday). “Even that isn’t really sufficient. They really need to staff beyond average daily capacity to make sure they bring down wait times and can handle days (like last Monday) when calls topped 70,000,” he said.

DES also has 600 people available to address claims, Jackson said. Staffing has been increased, but given that about 200,000 claims have been outstanding for more than 14 days, there’s clearly more needed.

All of which is information that should be coming from the governor, not a state senator. That may not be Cooper’s first instinct, especially when every COVID-19 decision the Democratic governor makes gets probed for flaws by Republican leaders in this election year. (AIthough if there’s any issue on which Republicans might be hesitant to poke the governor, it’s unemployment benefits, which GOP lawmakers have cut to cruel levels for North Carolinians.)

No matter. Cooper has a crisis within a crisis with the mess at DES, and he needs to do more than tell officials to move faster. He should explain regularly to North Carolinians how his administration is taking the lead in addressing the claims backlog, and how it’s going to provide staff who can meaningfully help the tens of thousands of people calling with questions each day.

This is an unprecedented problem, but not one that was unanticipated. The governor needs to own it, now.

This story was originally published May 18, 2020 at 11:27 AM.