$53 million for New Jersey unemployment call center called ‘waste of money’

New Jersey taxpayers have spent tens of millions of dollars helping answer phone calls from jobless claimants during the pandemic.

Now the unemployment rate is back to pre-pandemic levels, but thousands of claimants are still facing the same delays in processing benefits that were common in 2020 and 2021.

And some applicants express a familiar frustration: not being able to get through to a person at the Department of Labor.

“I called monthly and then became weekly just to try and get someone. I called already at 9 am, and they told me: “We have reached our status, how many people are in the queue.” Hang up and call tomorrow,” said Sidney Ziemba, a claimant who filed for unemployment benefits back in January 2021.

In the spring of 2020, hundreds of thousands of New Jersey residents filed for unemployment benefits every week. The influx of applications has led the State Department of Labor and Development (DOLWD) to contract with call center company Navient and pay the firm up to $3 million each month for calls from job seekers stuck in bureaucracy.

But now that the call center contract with Navient has ended, state lawmakers are reporting that many voters are still unable to get through to a person to resolve issues they are having with the online unemployment claims portal.

“If you make one mistake, you will immediately fall into the hell of unemployment from which there is no way out,” said Senator Anthony Bucco (R-Denville). “Because if you’re on the phone, most of the time you get a recording and you can’t talk to anyone to distract yourself.”

According to invoices received by the I-Team, Navient’s total call center bill was $53 million for answering 5.7 million calls. That’s over $9 per call.

“It was a waste of money,” Bucco said of the private call center. “We shouldn’t have passed this on to a third party because all the third party was doing was collecting information and then sending it to the Department of Labor!”

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A spokesman for Navient declined to comment on the company’s call center services.

New Jersey Labor Commissioner Rob Asaro-Angelo declined the I-Team’s request for an interview, but in an emailed statement, his spokeswoman Angela Delli-Santi said the call center was instrumental in handling an “unprecedented number of calls” . Now that the call center contract has ended, she said the department has increased the number of government employees tasked with answering unemployment calls from about 80 pre-COVID agents to an average of 104 now.

“As noted by the commissioner during the transition from a contract call center, we expected waiting times to increase because fewer people would answer calls, BUT once people get through, they can expect their problem to be resolved immediately or shortly thereafter, instead of to be put on the escalation list and wait a few weeks for a call back,” Delli-Santi said.

Despite this upbeat outlook, last year the Department of Labor provided state legislators with data that paints a deteriorating picture of the welfare process. The federal government says that most unemployment benefit recipients should receive their first payouts no later than 2-3 weeks after filing. Before the pandemic, in 2019, New Jersey met this indicator 87% of the time. But in 2022, New Jersey was only discharged on time 50% of the time.

The numbers are even worse when it comes to non-monetary decisions. Under the federal government, states must accept most non-monetary unemployment determinations within three weeks or less. In 2019, New Jersey met this 83 percent of the time; last year, the target was achieved only 27 percent of the time.

Testifying before a labor committee, Asaro-Angelo blamed burdensome federal regulations and an explosion of fraud for slowing down the processing of benefits across the country.

“The identity theft that has occurred since COVID is unbelievable and rampant across the country,” Asaro-Angelo said.

Last September, the Office of the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Labor reported $45.6 billion in potentially fraudulent unemployment benefits since March 2020.

Following demands from lawmakers last year, DOLWD began offering jobless claimants the opportunity to sign up for face-to-face appointments at a dozen “one-stop job centers.” The Department reports that approximately 68,000 applicants have already scheduled one of these face-to-face meetings. At the time of this article’s publication, the waiting time for face-to-face meetings was between 3 and 5 weeks.

But Bucco said more personal services were needed. In fact, he said that face-to-face claims processing is also critical to reducing fraud.

“It’s easy to cheat with a computer,” he said. This is very difficult to do when you have to personally go to the call center and provide them with information, and they can look at your driver’s license and take the necessary documentation.”

Ziemba said filing the application face-to-face at the office would eliminate clerical errors that she believes caused her claim to be stopped. According to her, after her initial online application in January 2021, she was sent a letter denying her benefits with incorrect employment dates. She appealed the denial and has been awaiting a hearing ever since.

More than 4,300 people were on the appeal waiting list at the beginning of 2023, according to the Department of Labor.

Ziemba said she is especially upset that the scammers have been so successful in gaining access to ill-gotten benefits while her unemployment appeal languishes.

“It’s so frustrating that people can easily slip through the system and get this money,” Ziemba said. “I’ve been sitting here for years waiting for this.”