OLYMPIA, Wash. – The Washington Employment Security Department says it has officially resolved a backlog including thousands of claims dating back to March.
The ESD said all claims in its “Operation 100%” initiative have been resolved, including individuals who had applied for unemployment between March 8 and June 18 and had yet to receive payments and needed action from ESD.
“Getting benefits to all eligible Washingtonians has been, and continues to be, our agency’s top priority in this crisis,” said ESD Commissioner Suzi LeVine. “As we turn the page on Operation 100%, more than 81,500 individuals who had applied by mid-June and not received payment now have a resolution on their claims. While clearing this initial backlog represents significant progress, and more than 900,000 individuals have received benefits since the crisis began, we know we still have a lot more work to do and a lot of trusts to be regained as we move into the next phase of our response. There are still those who have applied since mid-June or had issues set on their weekly claims and need resolution. We will leverage the progress made and lessons learned in Operation 100% to help those individuals and resolve all claims much faster moving forward.”
The ESD met its goal of clearing the backlog of 81,508 claims by July 31 and additionally met a target of reducing the average time to process claims to four weeks.
