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A Peek Inside The Chaos Of A Jobless Claims Website
For many economists, the weekly economic number released at 8:30am every Thursday by the DOL is even more important than the one reported by the BLS on the first Friday of the month: that's because, the conventional wisdom goes, initial jobless claims are are leading indicator into the labor pipeline, and therefore provide an advance glimpse into what the prior month's jobless claims will look like.
All of this naturally assumes that neither the first, nor the second data set are essentially two completely fabricated, goalseeked and "adjustment-smoothed" propaganda tools meant to promote either fiscal or monetary policy.
But all that aside, one doesn't even need to have a conspiratorial bent to realize just how unreliable this so very critical "leading" jobs indicator is.
Presenting the Florida jobless claims website.
According to the Miami Herald reports, on Friday, the state’s auditor general issued a scathing 45-page audit that joins mounting evidence that CONNECT - aka Florida's Online Reemployment Assistance System or said simpler, jobless claims website - is a system in disarray.
The audit found lapses that seemed to touch on every facet of CONNECT, which now costs $77 million, more than $14 million more than the previous estimate of the website.
The audit covers the period between Feb. 24, 2014, and June 30, 2014, when 500,000 claims were processed. It identified numerous areas of concern, including:
- Security: The agency that oversaw CONNECT, the Department of Economic Opportunity, broke state law by requiring claimants to log on the system using their Social Security numbers. Agencies must not require SSNs when they aren’t imperative, but because the DEO did, it subjected users to unnecessary security risks.
- Timeliness: The DEO may have violated federal requirements to timely pay or resolve claims. The audit found that as of June 30, about 44 percent of the 408,256 documents being processed were in the “unidentified” queue. The agency didn’t have procedures to ensure these unidentified documents were handled in a timely manner.
- Fraud: Because of lax safeguards, 20,535 potentially ineligible claims were paid between March 1 and June 30.
- Accuracy: CONNECT’s automated functions repeatedly entered in wrong data, such as inaccurate postmarks on documents, that could help negate a legitimate claim. Other safeguards weren’t in place to prevent the incorrect entry of data, increasing the odds of an incorrect cancellation or an overpayment.
- Overpayments and erroneous charges: One claimant was wrongfully charged for an overpayment in the amount of $16,897. Another claimant who had a payment rejected in 2013 was automatically paid the old claim when he filed a new claim in 2014.
- No accountability: CONNECT had few controls in place to ensure the “confidentiality, availability and integrity of its data.” Furthermore, reports that the DEO must file with the federal government weren’t being filed, raising concerns that the agency wasn’t complying with federal requirements.
The DEO’s executive director, Jesse Panuccio, at first denied there were problems that might hinder CONNECT. He later told lawmakers that the project’s vendor, Deloitte Consulting, which has been paid $40 million for the project, was to blame.
The audit was made public Friday afternoon, the weekend before the legislative session begins. But Panuccio had the audit for weeks. On Feb. 16, he sent a letter to Scott defending CONNECT, repeating his claim that things have improved.
“By the time of the release of the audit findings, CONNECT was a much improved system,” Panuccio said.
Yet for thousands of jobless claimants who struggled to get payments of up to $275 they needed to pay bills, the audit validates what they have encountered.
Panuccio repeatedly claimed CONNECT was operating better than it performed before its launch. In the year before CONNECT debuted, Florida paid 78 percent of its initial claims on time, according to federal guidelines. But by October 2014, that number had dropped to 27 percent.
The report further exposes CONNECT’s faults, said Ali Bustamante, an economic policy analyst at Loyola University in New Orleans who reviewed the audit.
And that's just one state's "modernized" claims website. We can only imagine what is the deplorable state of accuracy of the other 49 states (we wouldn't even touch "economic data" in DC with a 10 foot pole), and just how valid and "credible" any DOL data is when sourced from places such as this one.
In retrospect, one doesn't even need to assume some grand conspiracy: in this specific case, the complete collapse in the data distribution chain leaves the lowly Department of Labor apparatchik no other choice than to guesstimate all the data. With the appropriate nudging from their politically connected superior of course.
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folks got modernised?
We modernised some folks. Luckily, my authority has been expanded.
Folks all got Governmentized ... On both sides, the payors and the payees, with the Fuggingoobermeint in da middle
Moar shit we already knew. None of this is surprising. A website run by a bunch of state govt employees who probably can't find their ass with both hands and are not held accountable for their failures can't run a website. I'm sure all states are the same. And so , the BLS just makes it up, and makes sure it looks good for whatever clown in happens to occupy the high office.
Government agencies could fuck up a two car funeral. All of them. Everywhere.
That being said, these "modernized" systems were almost certainly built to NOT pay claims. Make the process difficult and slow and you'll drop a certain number of people out of them permanently. Our whole justice system runs on this principle, why not unemployment? Why not health care? Why not pretty much everything the government "promises"?
Just wait until they unveil the new Social Security claims paying system. Shit, we might not have as big a problem with "unfunded liabilities" as we think we do. Yeah, you're entitled, but good luck getting paid.
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New York State's unemployment insurance system has to be ten times worse, its UI system is a patronage dump where the Department of Labor never turns down a corrupt office lease from a connected landlord. NY Attorney General Schneiderman has more important things to do, like trying to get the sealed Judge Mayer report released, the 1973 report on the Attica prison uprising.
Deloitte is doing the same thing in California, bringing in hundreds of H-1B visas to do it:
'Foreign workers fill hundreds of Sacramento-area IT jobs'"It's nearly 8 p.m., and inside a state office building two dozen computer experts design and troubleshoot a system that will take and process millions of unemployment claims each year.
It's a $200 million Employment Development Department project, but with the exception of two managers, everyone inside the office is from outside of the U.S. They are employed by Deloitte, a major U.S. IT company hired by the state to create and manage its Unemployment Insurance Modernization project. The mostly Indian nationals are allowed to work here under a visa program called H-1B."
http://www.news10.net/story/news/investigations/2015/02/24/foreign-worke...
Hundreds of foreigners managed by two 'managers'. Good luck with that. It's a perpetual cost-plus program, until it isn't. Our tax dollars at work.
Corporations know the H1B law is a joke and circumvent it.
This astounds me. Imported workers processing unemployment claims for people they displaced. Beyond belief.
I do not begrudge any person a job but this is criminal.
edit: had to come in a fix a spelling error for the speling police.
http://www.bizjournals.com/houston/news/2015/02/24/pipe-manufacturer-cut...
Get up to date with the new auto spell-check from the Merriam Webster New Ebonics Dictionary. You'll never be taken for a homie again!
knukles the wise-cracking cracker grandpa is at it again! Tell us again grandpa, how you strung up one of them "bad apples" down at the farm.
Fucking retired fossilized hick.
See you been a member for 4 years and 5 weeks, accumulating a grand total of about 12 posts since 2/26/15, dispensing ad homonym attacks. We get it.
Issa: Edison's use of visa program 'deeply disturbing'
Congressman Darrell Issa called Southern California Edison’s apparent use of the federal H-1B visa program to replace part of its workforce “deeply disturbing” in a statement issued Friday.
The utility, which provides electricity to much of Southern California but not to San Diego County, is laying off about 400 information technology workers and replacing them with foreign workers under the non-immigrant worker visa program. An estimated additional 100 employees are leaving voluntarily.
http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2015/feb/07/darrell-issa-h1b-southern-cal...
"It's been days ago since I bludgeoned twenty women with an ax. I'm much better now. I promise."
It's been a few hours since I castrated my husband and I have an urge to tango again.
I love Sanibel. Alligator crossing warning signs, who needs to read anything else?
Florida blew me away. Miles of shanty dwellings along highways and then all these rich folks and malls.
Sanibel . The Ding Darling Bird Sanctuary. Heaven on earth it was.
Nobody ever accused native Floridians of being too smart.
Hint: there are NO bookstores in Florida.
Says the texans that planned to invade oklahoma so they purchased 500 septic tanks.
I'm not a Texan. Do a Google search for Larry Dallas.
Did you ever do Chrissy?
Bent her ovr at the Regal Beagle once...
This was in the paper over a year ago. They were hurting so bad, that they were publicly calling for help from the Obamacare developers. Quite a mess.
It's Bush's fault
thanks, Obama!
Winning !
It's very Robust.
I hate that fucking word "robust" It appears that all the talking heads must repeat it at least 10 times a day before they can pick up their check from GE
It is nuanced. Very nuanced.
New Anonymous op as White House still ignores murder of American reporter Serena Shim in Turkey
UN Chief: Israel may have purposely targeted UN base in Lebanon, killing Spanish soldier – VIDEO
Well this is embarassing !
Here in Kanada, actually claims are handled pretty efficiently but the benefits are barely subsistance.
However, our jobs numbers are certainly fudged too.
As for H1B...I couldnt believe it when i realized that Frenchmen and Arabs come here for lousy call center jobs and dishwashing work.
I mean, it must really be fucking bad in Europe.
Glad to say, I am NOT Charlie.
Welcome to any government. Where you will LIKE their abysmal, corrupt, performance and PAY for their abysmal, corrupt, performance... or go to jail.
Governments never were made to operate or function efficiently. A government job is what's known as "Make work" welfare.
it's function is to create jobs for the sake of creating jobs.
It's pretty much the last means of employment for the bottom of the barrel of society. You ever walk into the DMV, or go into city hall to pay for a permit and take a good hard look at the people serving you? These people could fuck up a cup of coffee.
I know summer is over and fall is upon us once I start to see commercials on television for The United Way. An organization who's sole purpose of existence is to keep municipal and fed government stocked up on dimwits.
I dread when it comes to renewing my passport or drives license because I know I'm going to have to visit one of these government offices and waste hours sitting in an empty waiting room in order to pay my fees and turn in my old passport.
all through my life when trying state employment programs, have never found me a job, I had to go out and get one myself.
This is what happens when a criminal is elected as governor. Scott should be in jail........not in the governor's mansion.
Timely post. Someone I know recently had his identity used to file a fraudulent State of Florida unemployment claim. I've also been a victim previously of identity theft from someone in Miami. Most of this fraud emanates from South Florida because of its diversity chamber pot.