Pennsylvania’s unemployment office is hiring 500 people to answer busy phone lines

Pennsylvania’s Labor and Industry Department said Wednesday that it would hire at least 500 people to answer phone calls from jobless workers, who can wait hours to get unemployment questions answered, if at all.

The new hires are meant to improve customer service at unemployment compensation centers, which handle a crush of jobless claims caused by the coronavirus and government restrictions. The additional staff will also free up experienced employees to resolve claims full time and look into why certain people haven’t received payment.

“To the individuals on unemployment programs who’ve struggled to reach one of our customer service representatives, we’ve not only heard you — we listened,” the department’s Acting Secretary Jennifer Berrier said in a statement.

Department officials said they are working with its call center vendor, Philadelphia-based InspiriTec, to hire the new staff by June. The department is prepared to hire as many as 1,000 new staff. Since March 15, the department has more than doubled its total unemployment service center staff from 775 employees to 1,730 currently.

The agency also plans to launch a tracking portal that will assign jobless workers a “ticket” to see their place in line and monitor their query status. The cost of the improvements will not exceed an estimated $58.6 million and will be paid for primarily using federal funding, according to the department.

“Our goal is ultimately to have every call answered,” Berrier said during a call with reporters.

The department announced the planned hires the same day that jobless workers and supporters rallied outside Gov. Tom Wolf’s Philadelphia office to demand improvements to the unemployment system. The rally was organized by the nonprofit Philadelphia Unemployment Project, which called for “a working unemployment system to provide timely responses and benefits to unemployed workers.”

Jobless workers have said they dial the agency hundreds of times per day to get beyond the busy signal, with some starting as soon as the office opens at 8 a.m. and others dialing on multiple phones at once. The average email response time is one to two weeks, according to the department.

“During the pandemic, getting through on the phone often has seemed almost like a lottery,” Sharon Dietrich, a lawyer for the Philadelphia nonprofit Community Legal Services, told state lawmakers Wednesday in testimony to the House Labor & Industry Committee.

Hiring more people to work the phones is a good first step, but it will take a lot more to solve the problems plaguing the state’s unemployment system, Dietrich said. For example, workers who weren’t laid off can wait months for state examiners to investigate why they separated from their employers and if they qualify for benefits. Meanwhile, fraudsters have targeted the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, and state officials have made unreasonable demands to verify identities and employment, she added.