California EDD

Sirmac Javius took advantage of a little-known, free governmental assistance program established during the pandemic, where California lawmakers' now have a small cadre of dedicated EDD staff to help constituents navigate the tangled bureaucracy, which has been riddled with technical difficulty and backlog of cases.

Hours after Sirmac Javius shared his painful experience of homelessness after he hasn't received an unemployment check for over a year to KTVU on Friday, someone set fire to his 2007 Chevrolet Silverado.

Sirmac Jarvius was working as an apprentice barber in East Oakland before the pandemic hit. When he lost his job, he turned to the California EDD for help. Fourteen months later, he's still waiting to receive his first payment.

California employment rates are still low despite the fact that job postings are more than 5% above pre-pandemic levels.

State senators and assembly members have already become one of the few ways that unemployed people can get through to EDD. But does the typical Californian know that they can turn to their legislator for help?

As a result of a class action lawsuit, the EDD must now stop its policy of freezing benefits for people whose existing claims have eligibility questions and instead continue sending checks while they investigate the problem.

Federal officials said the two inmates worked from their respective correctional facilities at Kern Valley State Prison and California Correctional Institute in coordination with someone on the outside to submit false unemployment claims.

Former federal prosecutor, McGregor W. Scott, was appointed as "fraud special counsel" to help investigate unemployment fraud in California.

California will stop giving unemployment benefits to people who are not actively applying for jobs, Gov. Gavin Newsom's administration announced Thursday.

Prosecutors allege that the men, who had met in prison, bilked mainly homeless people or transients who were living off Social Security or disability payments by pretending to counsel them.

Initially, EDD promised to process all extensions for all of those with a zero balance in their PEUC accounts by April 30th. But then the department shortened the wait. 

EDD claimants are learning that when a year's worth of claims have been collected, they're terminated unless they jump through a bureaucratic hoop. EDD says it was just a glitch.

The measure that cleared its first committee would require the beleaguered Employment Development Department to crosscheck unemployment applications with inmate records to identify fraudulent claims.

If one looks at the data for American wages in 2020, which shows that they grew historically fast, this fact may seem to be cause for celebration. But a closer look at the data paints yet another picture of stark inequality and of the "K-shaped recovery."

Intermittent outages over several days caused many unemployed Californians to be unable to access their online accounts or certify their claims.

Record unemployment in California during the coronavirus pandemic exposed flaws, failures, and exacerbated fraud of the state's Employment Development Department.

Two U.S. Postal Service employees were arrested Wednesday on charges that they abused their positions to obtain unemployment benefits through false claims of pandemic-related job losses.