This article examines how outdated state unemployment insurance (UI) systems struggled during the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to delays, technical failures, and widespread frustration for job seekers.
This report explores the Maine Department of Labor’s (MDOL) remarkable response to this layoff through collaboration with the Peer Workforce Navigator project—a coalition of community-based organizations in partnership with the MDOL—which made a huge difference in the lives of these laid off workers. The report also examines aspects of the state’s unemployment insurance (UI) system that might be improved to account for similar situations in the future.
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.
This paper concludes that the substantial COVID-19 unemployment insurance expansion had limited disincentive effects on job searches, particularly among lower-income individuals, despite high wage replacement rates.
In this updated primer, the DBN describes how identity proofing and authentication show up in public benefits applications and outlines equity and security concerns raised by common identity proofing and authentication methods.
Michigan's UIA director, Julia Dale, is leading the agency through transition by prioritizing lived experience, hope, grit, and values. Virginia's SNAP Program Manager, Michele Thomas, highlighted the success of Sun Bucks, a summer EBT child nutrition program that fed over 700,000 kids in its first year.
The exclusion of agricultural and domestic workers—predominantly African Americans—from the 1935 Social Security Act's unemployment insurance program is analyzed as a result of international policy diffusion rather than solely domestic racial politics.
This publication shares ten ways states can improve start-to-finish customer experience for unemployment insurance claimants. These approaches can increase overall equitable access and system integrity for UI administration.
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.
