Reddit's unemployment forums have become vital support networks during the pandemic, offering advice, emotional support, and a sense of community to those navigating job loss and financial hardship.
This HuffPost article investigates the widespread failures of state unemployment websites during the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting outdated technology, accessibility issues, and the human impact of these systemic breakdowns.
This post argues that for the types of large-scale, organized fraud attacks that many state benefits systems saw during the pandemic, solutions grounded in cybersecurity methods may be far more effective than creating or adopting automated systems.
The vast fraud committed through the use of stolen and synthetic identities in UI programs has spotlighted the need for updated identity fraud detection mechanisms. As states are implementing new technologies and systems, they need to consider the ways in which they are impacting racial inequities in UI benefits.
This report by EPIC investigates how automated decision-making (ADM) systems are used across Washington, D.C.’s public services and the resulting impacts on equity, privacy, and access to benefits.
It is necessary give the public servants who manage safety-net systems the technology tools and incentives to track critical outcomes and meet people where they are.
The Better Government Lab at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University has developed a new scale for measuring the experience of burden when accessing public benefits. They offer both a three-item scale and a single-item scale, which can be utilized for any public benefit program. The shorter scales provide a less burdensome way to measure by requiring less information from users.
The experience of the COVID-19 pandemic and its induced recession underscored the crucial importance of unemployment insurance (UI) to workers, and to the stability of the American economy. Temporary federal expansions of unemployment systems during the pandemic showed how they can quickly be scaled to increase benefit levels and to include categories of workers who were not previously eligible, such as the self-employed, caregivers, and low-wage workers. And, states showed that separate programs can be set up to provide similar benefits to workers who are explicitly excluded from unemployment insurance—in particular immigrants who do not have a documented immigration status.
This report provides specific actions the federal government could take to reduce identity fraud and establish a whole-of-government victim redress approach.
The Advancing Economic Mobility for Low-Income Families report, published by the National Governors Association (NGA) Center for Best Practices, provides policy options for governors to strengthen economic security, workforce participation, and wealth-building opportunities for low-income families.
