Salt, meet wound. Insult, greet injury. State employment offices, say hello to the jobless. Please.
In recent weeks, the agencies that handle claims from the growing ranks of unemployed people in Virginia and North Carolina have reported major glitches in their automated systems for processing benefits.
Each week, individuals seeking unemployment checks have to file for benefits with their state's unemployment offices. They can do so by phone or online.
Ordinarily, these encounters are routine. But on the Monday after Christmas, the Virginia Employment Commission was overwhelmed by a deluge of calls from the jobless - a stunning (and depressing) average of 50 a minute.
On the first Sunday and Monday of the new year, a similar wave of chaos hit North Carolina's Employment Security Commission. Its Web site crashed under the weight of tens of thousands of attempts to file claims.
Officials from both states say they've taken steps to deal with the problems. In Virginia's case, the capacity for its automated phone system was expanded, and in North Carolina, a new Internet server was added.
Unemployed folks are facing enough challenges - namely, finding a job and paying their bills. They certainly don't need the additional aggravation and anxiety of having to call or log onto their computers repeatedly to ensure that they receive their unemployment checks in a timely manner.
If officials in the two states can't handle the volume of calls, there is one obvious source they can turn to for help - the very people trying to get in touch with them. The ranks of the unemployed undoubtedly include quite a few tech-savvy folks ready, willing and able to fix the problem, not to mention people who'd love to land jobs processing the claims in person or on the phone.
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I agree - & let them keep their full unemployment benefits
I agree. However, pay them minimum wage and allow them to file for reimbursement for their travel to and from work - and allow thse recently unemployed to keep their full unemployment benefits until they can find a new job to replace the better paying job they lost. A new job with a salary at least reasonably close to what they were earning at their last job. This is a "win-win" in that the state can acquire low cost additional help with the (hopefully) temporary over laod of unemployed and those job seekers that are qualified and unemployed are not penalized for taking a temporary low paying job until they can find a better paying replacement job. For many that earn more than 35K a year, the maximum unemployment benefits are woefully inadequate to cover their monthly housing, food, medical, and transportation costs. Having the opportunity to actually work and not take a loss in the process is a sensible improvement over the system we have now - a system that penalizes the recently unemployed for accreting a lower paying job until they can find a job that pays them a salary that they have been earning prior to being laid off due to the failing economy.