This report outlines the U.S. Department of Labor’s comprehensive action plan to strengthen the unemployment insurance (UI) system by addressing chronic underfunding and proposing legislative reforms to support long-term modernization and resilience.
This report investigates how D.C. government agencies use automated decision-making (ADM) systems and highlights their risks to privacy, fairness, and accountability in public services.
The U.S. Digital Response collaborated with a state workforce agency to develop a multilingual, user-friendly system for retroactive Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) applications, enhancing claimant comprehension and reducing administrative strain.
This resource allows policymakers, employers, benefits providers, and researchers assess benefits performance for constituents and identify opportunities in market and policy innovation to ensure equitable benefits distribution.
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.
Dana Chisnell describes work leading a team of researchers to interview people from across the US on their experiences applying for unemployment and other benefits during the pandemic.
This research used observational research with unemployment insurance (UI) claimants to identify pain points in the application process and inform customer experience improvements.
In a time of crisis, behavioral science offers insights into how to reduce the paperwork and other administrative burdens that prevent people from taking advantage of crucial support services.
Through the interviews, ULP sought to capture details of claimant experience, see how and why system failures occurred, and make recommendations for reform now—before another financial or public health crisis suddenly causes state unemployment rates to spike.
A case study of the Hawai‘i Career Acceleration Navigator — an accessible, data-driven and full-service government platform for unemployed people and other jobseekers to search for jobs and access supportive service benefits.
In December 2024, the Digital Benefits Network released an updated open dataset on authentication and identity proofing requirements across various public benefits applications to highlight best practices and areas for improvement in identity management.
