HARRISBURG, Pa. — The Pa House Labor and Industry committee will receive an update from the Dept. of Labor & Industry on its unemployment compensation system. Some people collecting unemployment benefits this last year have struggled to collect their benefits through the system. For some, it's not that they've run into problems, but it's that there's never anyone available to help them fix the issue with their claim.
The Dept. of Labor & Industry has continued to increase its number of employees over the last year, but still the issue we hear most often are people not being able to get in contact with someone from the department to help with their claim.
FOX43's spoken with claimants who have spent hours everyday calling into the state's unemployment help line only to be met with a busy tone due to the overwhelming amount of people also calling with questions. There is a pandemic unemployment support group on Facebook with more than 11,000 members aimed at helping each other fix their issues with their benefits. Many of them say, they try calling the state's unemployment help line more than 200 times a day.
Some members claim they are still owed thousands of dollars from the Dept. of Labor and Industry and that because there is an unknown issue with their claims, they haven't received benefit payments for months.
The latest unemployment numbers we received from the state are for February 2021, where the state's unemployment rate remained at 7.3 percent, up 2.3 percentage points from February 2020.
The Labor and Industry Committee meeting with a status update from the Dept. of Labor & Industry is expected to begin at 10 a.m.