Updated: 6:36 AM EST Feb 19, 2021 The Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry provided an update last week on issues and fixes related to the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program and the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation program.The information below is from L&I:PUAThe PUA program extension rollout on Jan. 22 has alerted L&I of multiple issues with our system that we are working to correct.Issues and fixesIf eligible, funds were released for claimants who previously filed for the weeks of Jan 2., Jan. 9 and Jan. 16.Some claimants were experiencing a USCIS issue related to residency (permanent resident versus U.S. citizen) which is actively being worked on.We added the 2020 base year for claimants who applied for PUA after Dec. 27. New claimants will receive individual messaging on next steps through the PUA dashboard. Once verified and any outstanding issues have been resolved, payments will be released.L&I is actively working to resolve the outstanding
WGAL continues to hear from viewers who are still waiting for unemployment benefits and finding it a challenge to make contact with the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry.“I haven t received one benefit for the past four weeks,” Rachael McLaughlin said.McLaughlin said that when she was able to return to work after recovering from COVID-19, she was told she no longer had a job.She said she applied for unemployment and received a letter asking for additional documents for verification.“It was literally me sitting in my house all day long, hitting the button and then ending it as soon as I got the redial. And I did that over and over and over again from 8 o’clock in the morning to 3:35 in the afternoon,” she said.McLaughlin finally got through weeks later. She said she was told to email or fax additional documents and that she would receive a response after that. I said, Well, how long is that going to take because I m a single mom of three. I literally have not
The Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry has provided an update on issues and fixes related to the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program and the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation program.
WGAL continues to hear from viewers who are frustrated by a lack of action and a lack of response on their unemployment claims.While the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry said last week that it was on the verge of fixing problems keeping benefits out of people’s pockets, there are new issues.Acting Secretary Jennifer Berrier said during a news conference Monday, Feb. 1, that people have reported long delays in an online waiting room to file Pandemic Unemployment Assistance claims. That waiting room had several thousand people in it on Sunday. Our vendor is very aware of the recent long wait times, and the vendor also performed some quick maintenance on the site a short time ago to try and improve the situation,” Berrier said.Berrier also said updates have been made to the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation system.“Just yesterday we completed a change to our Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation, or PEUC, system that allows a small subset of claim