PENNSYLVANIA, USA — People who are filing for unemployment in Pennsylvania will soon have to prove that they're looking for work.
In normal times, most people filing for unemployment have to show the state they are looking for work.
However, that was removed under an emergency order when the pandemic started.
Now, fewer people are filing unemployment claims and places are hiring.
Sarah DeSantis, press secretary for the PA Department of Labor and Industry says a big factor to adding back the work search requirement for unemployment claimants is COVID -19 vaccines. "We want to make sure that people can access vaccines and be fully vaccinated before we're saying 'Hey, you need to make sure that you can return to work' because It doesn't make sense for us to force people to go back to a job where they don't feel comfortable yet, so that's part of the timeline."
The department is also hoping to get PA career link offices fully open for in-person help too.
Although, DeSantis recommends people should start looking for a job now, even if they're not fully ready to return to work, saying "If you wait until job search is back in place and you're suddenly in this big rush of people, then you're not going to have as much leverage as you do right now when it seems like everybody is looking for work."
As for an exact date, DeSantis said the department is focusing on the new PA unemployment system upgrade first.
"We'd be looking to do the new system first because those two things kind of go hand and hand being able to certify that I've looked for a job this week and I wasn't able to find one, so we would be looking at June or later for that."
Meanwhile, some PA Republican lawmakers are pushing a bill that would require the work search requirement to return on the same day the PA Department of Labor & Industry launches the new unemployment system on June 8th.
