New fed relief plan saves aid for 925,000 Pennsylvanians, state says

Congress extended a lifeline to about 925,000 Pennsylvanians who get federal unemployment benefits by giving final approval Wednesday to a $1.9 trillion covid relief package.

The House on Wednesday passed the American Rescue Plan, after the Senate approved its own version of the controversial stimulus bill on March 6. President Biden promised to sign the bill on Friday, a day before those special programs were set to expire for most claimants.

“We don’t envision any problems. There should not be any disruption to the claims,” Jennifer Berrier, the state’s acting secretary of the Department of Labor and Industry, said Wednesday. There will be a seamless transition from unemployment compensation benefits approved last year to programs extended in the new relief package, unless there are some changes from the federal Labor Department, Berrier said.

About 250,000 Pennsylvanians receive assistance through the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation and 600,000 get help through the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program for self-employed and gig workers. About 75,000 unemployed workers get assistance through the Extended Benefits program, which was made available through the Emergency Unemployment Compensation program, according to the Labor & Industry Department.

While jobless workers in Pennsylvania will continue to get federal help, the state is moving forward with a plan to hire 500 additional customer service representatives to answer phone calls. Berrier said she hopes to have all of those new workers on the job by the end of May. The department is hoping the additional staff will eliminate a frequent complaint from jobless workers: not reaching unemployment compensation representatives, despite hours of phone calls and countless emails.

The $50 million in federal funding to pay for the new temporary workers will allow the state to hire as many as 1,000, depending on the number of calls they get, Berrier said. More customer service workers are necessary, Berrier said, “especially with the 50% attrition rate” in workers doing those jobs.

There was a backlog of calls because the department was “vastly understaffed” with 770 employees to deal with the number of claims in February 2020, when the jobless rate was low, Berrier said.

“The pandemic hit and we had a massive flood of claims filed in March, April and May,” Berrier said.

The state’s 5% jobless rate in February 2020 jumped to 13.5% in May, as the ranks of unemployed workers swelled from 324,000 in February 2020 to 863,000 in May, according to state data. The department was answering 5,230 calls a week before the pandemic hit, then 30,400 a week when the covid restrictions slammed the economy.

“We were serving a part of the (working) population we’ve never served before,” Berrier said, a reference to self-employed workers being eligible for benefits during the pandemic.