During a House Appropriations Committee budget hearing Tuesday, Jennifer Berrier, acting secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry (L&I), testified that the state has permanently lost 500,000 jobs due to the economic shutdowns initiated by Gov. Tom Wolf in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Berrier noted that Pennsylvania was experiencing record employment in February 2020 with over 6.1 million Pennsylvania residents employed. Approximately 1.12 million immediately lost employment following Wolf’s shutdown orders in March 2020. She stated that, by November 2020, only 57 percent of those jobs were restored, reporting that there are now 5.6 million Pennsylvania residents employed.
Pennsylvania’s unemployment compensation system has made $37 billion in payments on 24 million claims over the past year. However, unemployment delays and lack of response from L&I’s Unemployment Compensation (UC) Call Center have continued to be a point of frustration among legislators.
During the hearing, Rep. Natalie Mihalek (R-Allegheny/Washington) called the UC Call Center and received a busy signal, claiming she had been trying to get through all morning.
“It is frustrating to hear that,” she said to Berrier. “It is frustrating beyond belief for those out there with no income to hear that on the other end. And I want to make sure that you and your leadership team have an accurate picture of what it looks like for the average person going through our unemployment system.”
Berrier did not answer why the wait and response times were so slow, claiming that her office has “plans in the works” to strengthen call center operations and is working to bolster staffing, which takes time due to the constraints of specific, specialized training to handle the complex issues of the UC system.
Currently, there is also a 92-day timeframe for unemployment adjudications. Rep. Elizabeth Fiedler (D-Philadelphia) asked if that was an acceptable timeframe, and while Berrier agreed that it was not, she could not offer an alternative to reduce it at this time.
Additionally, Rep. Jesse Topper (R-Bedford) brought up the “concerning” fact that the Department of Health (DOH) deputized L&I employees as compliance officers to investigate 400 employers and enforce mitigation orders. Berrier confirmed that 27 employees from L&I’s enforcement office were deputized by DOH, which, along with the Wolf administration, has been repeatedly criticized for its failure to communicate with other agencies regarding COVID-19 shutdown orders and vaccine distribution.
“I just find it ironic that the Department of Health, in their lack of communication with almost every other department, did find it necessary to communicate to bring aboard other departments when it came down to bringing the hammer down on more of our small businesses that have been devastated through much of this process,” Topper said.
Berrier testified that the cases referred from DOH do not take much time and have statistically improved government sanctioned mitigation orders, ensuring safe working environments for employees across the state. Of the 400 referred employers, 223 have been completed, she said.