The Department of Workforce Development in Wisconsin (DWD) is scaling up their service to work through millions of phone calls and hundreds of thousands of claims in a system that wasn’t prepared for the influx, according to a report from the Wisconsin Radio Network.
The backlog reflects a surge in the state to 14.1% unemployment, caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and economic fallout. Although the claims are lower in Wisconsin than the national average, the state’s unemployment system was not built for the volume of claims or prepared for how sudden the claims came in. In response, the DWD is scaling up its service to reduce the backlog of claims.
