The Georgia Department of Labor processed 5.4 million unemployment claims during the pandemic, third highest in the nation, and paid out more than $23.6 billion in benefits.
While that workload put a tremendous strain on the department, it’s not the reason state Commissioner of Labor Bruce Thompson announced late last month a plan to overhaul Georgia’s unemployment compensation system.
“This agency needed to modernize and make changes long before the pandemic,” Thompson said Oct. 2. “The pandemic just highlighted the necessity of making the changes.”
Thompson, a Republican former state senator, vowed to overhaul the labor department within days of taking office last January. He was sworn in on the heels of a Georgia Office of Inspector General report that nearly 300 state employees had erroneously received unemployment benefits totaling $6.7 million during the last two pandemic years.
Besides tackling fraud, Thompson also vowed to eliminate a backlog of about 59,000 unemployment claims and repair the agency’s 39 career centers around the state, many of which had suffered extensive water damage.
But modernizing an unemployment compensation system that dates back to the 1980s, one of the oldest in the country, was the most glaring need.
The goal is to replace that outdated system with a secure, cutting-edge web-based platform over the next two years to 28 months.
A fully online system will let unemployed Georgians file claims without having to travel to a career center, Thompson said.
“The customer experience will be much better,” he said. “On the employer side, it will help keep premiums low by cutting down on fraud … [and] it gives us greater transparency, so when we have audits, we can comply in a timely manner.”
The planned overhaul of the way Georgia provides unemployment compensation is drawing bipartisan praise from state lawmakers.
“I certainly think the Georgia Department of Labor needs to be modernized to support Georgia workers and their needs,” said state House Minority Whip Sam Park, D-Lawrenceville. “My understanding is one in five Georgians who applied during the pandemic never got those [unemployment benefits].”
Georgia Rep. Bill Werkheiser, chairman of the House Industry and Labor Committee, said Georgia wasn’t alone in struggling to pay out jobless claims during the pandemic.
“I don’t think anybody in the country was prepared for the pandemic,” said Werkheiser, R-Glennville. “When you’re getting 100 calls a day and suddenly, it’s 6,000 to 10,000, you don’t have the staff.”
Thompson said the new system will help the department do its job better with a smaller staff than the agency had on its payroll in previous years. The modernization plan is intended to improve customer service through efficient call routing.
“There’s no reason you should have people waiting three hours on hold or six months or more waiting for appeals,” he said.
Thompson said the overhaul will cost $55 million to $60 million. The department has received a federal grant of $28 million to help with the effort, and the agency plans to seek additional funding from the General Assembly in the fiscal 2024 midyear budget and the fiscal 2025 spending plan, he said.
Besides modernizing the unemployment compensation system, the department also has landed an $8 million federal grant to help the agency find jobs for inmates released from the state prison system. Thompson said the goal is to use mock job interviews to train inmates in how to handle real interviews.
“We don’t want to just give them a referral,” he said. “We want to make sure they’re equipped with skills before leaving [the prison system].”
Another project involves relocating some of the department’s career centers.
“Some are in areas that aren’t very safe to come to,” Thompson said. “Everyone in our state deserves to work in a safe, clean environment.”
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