Kansas Labor Secretary Delia Garcia says she realizes the concerns residents have — and the struggles they face — as they try to get unemployment information during the COVID-19 pandemic.
On KVOE’s Talk of Emporia on Wednesday, Garcia reassured residents that recent adjustments will help ease the backlog that’s been in place for a month.
The department has also called back retired workers to help with the caseload. During her daily news conference Wednesday, Governor Laura Kelly said 150 people were handling phone calls, up from 20 at the start of the pandemic.
On the technology side, the Labor Department upgraded its phone system last year. It had been working to upgrade a better-than-40-year-old computer mainframe. Garcia says the mainframe is actually working, but an information transfer mechanism has been having issues so staffers have been pulling the website down to make fixes. The state was in the process of researching replacements for the mainframe before COVID-19 hit.
Garcia says the number of filings has dropped from 55,000 three weeks ago to around 30,000 last week, but over 160,000 workers have now filed for unemployment benefits. The number of calls was over 750,000 per day earlier this week, or around 5,000 per employee per day.
Garcia continues driving people to the Labor Department’s special website, www.getkansasbenefits.gov. She says workers can file claims online if they have information like personal information, employer name and length of employment. Employers, meanwhile, can submit information if they need to start layoffs or reduce worker hours. She says the Labor Department continues working with several other state agencies, and those agencies are sharing their COVID-19 information on their respective websites. In addition, the Labor Department has a weekly online town hall on its Facebook page.
The Labor Department’s phone number, 800-292-6333, is typically reserved for people who are non-English speakers, military service personnel or who have recently moved to Kansas.
