Is what Delaware wasted in unemployment benefit payments for each of the past 3 years – just over $45 million total from July 2008 to June 2011. We had a 10.31% error rate!
State Reps. Gerald Hocker, Harvey Kenton, Ruth Briggs King and Jack Peterman sent a letter yesterday to Labor Secretary John McMahon:
In a recent report, the U.S. Department of Labor indicated that between July 2008 and June 2011, state governments had collectively wasted nearly $19 billion in Unemployment Insurance (UI) benefits by making payments in error.
For the three-year period covered by the report, Delaware had an average payment error rate of 10.31 percent, reportedly misallocating almost $45.3 million in UI benefits. According to the federal report, about 40 percent of this error was due to continuing to pay benefits to claimants after they had returned to work. Another 17-percent was due to “separation issues” – cases where the circumstances of a claimant’s loss of employment disqualified him or her from receiving benefits, but that information was received after benefits had been paid.
Twenty-five states and the District of Columbia had lower error rates over the period.
It will be interesting to see what kind of response they receive. Wonder if anyone who got money by mistake has been asked to return it?
Read the full letter in PDF format.
