I previously covered the workplace and the economy for the Republic.

During the past decade, I’ve been on staff at the Advocate magazine, the Des Moines Register, the Associated Press and the Hollywood Reporter. I’ve covered everything from economics to movie production to agriculture to politics. I got my start as an assistant press secretary in the U.S. Senate.

My other skills: shooting and editing video, social media and SEO training, analyzing web audience using Omniture and good old-fashioned journalism.

December 14, 2009

Arizonans who collect unemployment benefits are getting their money faster and encountering fewer bureaucratic delays from the state agency that administers the program.

Newly released figures show that the Arizona Department of Economic Security has increased its on-time delivery to filers by 32 percentage points compared with its slowest performance in the past year, in mid-January.

Fewer laid-off workers are waiting months to get their first check. Most no longer spend hours on hold to speak with an unemployment call-center specialist. And consumer advocates are fielding far fewer complaints about the system than at the start of 2009.

The agency, which hired more staff members and upgraded its technology, is now within a few percentage points of meeting federal standards for paying out benefits after falling far short of targets for months.

The U.S. Department of Labor requires states to get unemployment money into the hands of 87 percent of first-time filers within two to three weeks.

DES reached 82 percent this month. That’s a vastly improved performance compared with earlier this year. For the week ending Jan. 16 — the worst performance period in the past year — the agency got money into the hands of only 50 percent of first-time filers on time.

The new numbers are preliminary but are a good gauge of the monthly official data submitted to the federal government.

While the agency has by no means solved all of its problems, the news should be a bit of relief for the 162,000 jobless Arizonans who currently collect benefits and are trying to survive the worst economy since the Great Depression.

During the recession, Arizona has consistently ranked as one of the worst-performing states for paying benefits on time. After years of low unemployment, DES was unprepared for the flood of new claims in the past year.

Tens of thousands of claimants waited months for checks to arrive. Some waited hours, if not days, to reach a person through the agency’s call centers, and many were blocked from filing due to technology meltdowns.

As a result of delayed checks, some faced losing their homes. Others had to pawn valuables and skip meals.

The timeliness issue became so pressing that a Phoenix-based legal group that advocates for low-income workers sued DES in March. The William E. Morris Institute for Justice later dropped the suit after DES laid out a timetable to meet federal requirements by the summer. It failed to meet that deadline, and the institute continues to monitor weekly timeliness data.

DES officials initially blamed the delays on the flood of new filers brought on by the recession, but then began to examine the employment division’s own structural problems, some of which stretched back years.

The agency began increasing the number of staffers to process applications and making technology upgrades. DES Director Neal Young brought in new officials to oversee information-technology and unemployment-benefits administration.

Patrick Harrington, assistant director of Employment and Rehabilitation Services, was cautiously optimistic about the latest numbers.

“We’ve made progress,” he said. “We are not going to rest until we are as timely as we can possibly be.”

Recipient sees progress

Glendale resident Cookie Gill was laid off in February from her job at the Arizona Department of Administration. The longtime administrative assistant waited about 10 weeks to receive her first unemployment funds.

“I don’t think the Arizona Department of Economic Security was equipped to deal with it,” she said.

Gill credits her faith and workers’ compensation payments due to a knee injury for helping her survive that tough time. These days, she is not encountering any problems receiving her money.

“To me, it’s 180 degrees different than when I initially applied,” said Gill, who continues to look for work.

Plan of action

The latest data is no doubt largely helped by the fact that initial claims have fallen dramatically, to 5,865 for the last week of November. As recently as the first week of August, the DES said there were 10,946 initial claims.

“If that trend continues, it looks like we are on the right track here,” Harrington said.

DES also began to fix structural problems, particularly after a server failure and computer virus that blocked 46,000 Arizonans from filing weekly claims this summer and delayed their payments.

Here are some of the steps DES took:

* Increased the number of unemployment-insurance staffers to 480, compared with 110 in December 2007, when the recession officially began.

* Increased its phone capacity, reducing average wait times to six minutes, vs. a high of 42 minutes on Dec. 20, 2008.

* Rewrote Web site pages in more user-friendly language in an effort to reduce the number of people calling in for help. Additionally, it has increased training for the call-center staff and launched an automatic service that reminds claimants via e-mail or phone to file for weekly claims.

In September, an internal investigation turned up about 7,000 unemployment applications that had slipped through the cracks and were never fully processed.

Some cases dated as far back as May 2007, meaning that thousands of jobless Arizonans waited months or even years to receive funds.

The backlog dragged down the timeliness statistics as each required an adjudicator to investigate whether an applicant was eligible for unemployment money.

About 95 percent of the cases were resolved as of mid-December, according to Harrington.

Officials blamed the problem on technology. The current system requires adjudicators to track cases across multiple software programs. That becomes increasingly difficult as the number of total claims increases.

“We are satisfied that we’ve identified all those old cases,” Young said. “The bottom line is that we are looking for those claims that should have been investigated and been paid or should have been determined ineligible. We are going to make right with our customers.”

The coming year

Neither critics of DES nor the agency’s own officials will say that Arizona has turned a corner in regard to meeting or exceeding federal timeliness standards.

Ellen Katz, attorney and director of the William E. Morris Institute, acknowledged the numbers had improved, but she remains worried that too many Arizonans continue to fall through the cracks.

“They’re still having hundreds of people, each week, who wait seven, eight, nine, 10 weeks (to get their first unemployment checks),” she said.

Timeliness could fall again if the state’s unemployment rolls increase because of new turbulence in the economy.

Nationally, job seekers take, on average, seven months to find a new job, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s the longest gap since the federal government began keeping such records in 1948.

Some economists do not see Arizona’s labor force returning to prerecessionary growth levels until 2014.

Meanwhile, DES continues to rely on decades-old technology to process unemployment claims, including software that was considered state-of-the-art in the 1970s.

It has again delayed a software project that was supposed to launch in November.

The IAS program was initially pitched in 2005 between a handful of states and the Labor Department to make it easier for adjudicators to schedule and track claims and predict needed staffing.

The project has been plagued with problems and every state except for Arizona eventually dropped out. After spending more than $600,000 in federal money, it has never worked.

DES has started testing the IAS system “under real-world conditions” but a launch date has not been finalized, according to a spokesman.

In addition, Arizona, along with Wyoming, Idaho and North Dakota, has received Labor Department approval to try to design a plan to overhaul each state’s unemployment insurance systems.

Questions also remain about what will happen to benefits after the new year.

Unless Congress approves additional money, an estimated 84,000 Arizonans will lose their extended federal unemployment when the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 funding expires Dec. 31.

The end to extended benefits would severely burden DES, which would have to mail out notices to a population larger than the city of Avondale.

It would also have to reprogram outdated systems to phase out automatic unemployment payments and deal with the outcry of frustrated former recipients.

October 4, 2009

As Arizonans began to lose their jobs in record numbers over the past year, the technology that powers the state’s unemployment-benefits system began to quake under the load.

Computer problems blocked people from filing for benefits and sent out wrong e-mails to claimants waiting for money. The phone network placed claimants on hold for hours.

The system — part of which relies on software from the 1980s — hasn’t had a major overhaul in years, according to the Arizona Department of Economic Security, which administers unemployment benefits.

Lack of funding was one reason. Also, administrators believed that the technology was stable enough — and had been upgraded just enough — to handle the demands of a recession.

But DES found itself overwhelmed. Before the recession, it typically processed 30,000 claims a week; now it handles nearly 150,000.

Tens of thousands of Arizonans waited months to receive their first unemployment funds. As the delays dragged on, some were pushed to the financial edge, unable to pay their rent or mortgage, forced to go without food and sell valuables just to survive.

An Arizona Republic review of thousands of DES documents shows how aging technology and a lack of foresight compounded the problems:

* A software project, originally pitched in 2005, was supposed to streamline the unemployment payment process. The IAS program originally promised to help DES schedule and track claims and predict needed staffing.

It has never worked. It has cost more than $600,000 in federal money.

DES officials repeatedly tried to roll out the system as the economy imploded and claims spiked. That strategy expanded an already massive backlog of unresolved cases.

* In May, a supervisor reported getting calls from jobless Arizonans who didn’t receive money after renewing claims. Officials discovered that one erroneous Social Security number threw off two programs that were processing benefits.

That stopped 30,000 claims from being approved, delaying money for days.

* In July, upward of 60 adjudicators, the people who tackle problem unemployment cases, could not work for at least half a day because a computer server crashed.

* In August, a server failure and computer virus blocked 46,000 Arizonans from reapplying for weekly benefits online. People tried to file over the phone but could not get through.

“When it rains, it pours,” Todd Bright, former head of the Division of Technology Services, wrote in an e-mail sent the August day when the server failed. The virus infected more than 2,000 DES computers and servers.

DES Director Neal Young moved Bright to the Division of Business and Finance after the meltdown. Jim Hillyard became the new assistant director of the division.

Beyond the administrative changes, the fact remains that the technology is outdated, said Patrick Harrington, DES assistant director of employment and rehabilitation services.

“It is a mainframe-based system. It’s not Web-based,” he said in an interview with The Republic.

Fully modernizing the technology could cost tens of millions of dollars and a handful of years. Therefore, DES’ strategy appears to be to keep patching the system and hoping it continues to function.

The agency has launched an easier-to-understand Web site and made it possible for jobless Arizonans to file online for extended federal benefits. Increased phone capacity has reduced callers’ average wait from 23 minutes four weeks ago to two minutes.

DES will use additional federal funds to fix parts of the system, including $10.7 million in stimulus money to help administer the unemployment program. Harrington said that 75 percent of that money will likely be used to hire staff. The rest will be used on technology improvements.

Last week, the Labor Department awarded Arizona nearly $6.8 million to help process unemployment payments faster.

Arizona will use $2.7 million of that to make technology upgrades.

It will contribute the remaining $4.1 million of that to draw up a study to determine how it, North Dakota, Idaho and Wyoming can modernize their unemployment-insurance systems. The state will give $2 million of that to Idaho, which will take the lead on the project.

The effort will take years to come to fruition and will not help jobless Arizonans now collecting benefits, but DES says the plan is necessary.

“We’re not the only state facing this problem, and we’re collaborating with other states to come up with a solution,” DES spokesman Steve Meissner said. “This is the first step in a long-term solution. We can’t fix this overnight.”

State falls short

Ellen Katz, attorney and director of the William E. Morris Institute for Justice in Phoenix, said DES is still not meeting the needs of many jobless Arizonans.

The group, which advocates for low-income workers, filed a lawsuit against DES in March to speed up payment of benefits. Katz dropped the lawsuit a month later after DES officials promised to improve.

She points to DES data for the week ending Sept. 25 showing nearly 550 Arizonans went 10 weeks or longer before receiving their first unemployment funds.

“What would happen to their finances?” Katz asked. “Would (the average citizen) be able to pay the rent, pay the mortgage, make a car payment, buy medicine?”

U.S. Labor Department guidelines state that 87 percent of first-time filers must receive funds within two to three weeks. Over the first nine months of this year, Arizona ranked lower than 48 other states, meeting that standard only 68 percent of the time.

DES’ timeliness has improved since the start of the year, but it dropped to 75 percent in August compared with 79 percent in July.

Harrington acknowledges that DES is still falling short. “We consider the federal timeliness standards to be the minimum that we need to do,” he said.

“(Recently) we paid 145,000 people. Now that ain’t chicken feed. That is a significant number of people. … For those people, we’ve either done a good job or pretty good job. For those whom we haven’t been able to help, I understand entirely their frustration. I understand they are entitled to these funds and that they need them to exist.”

The recession may be winding down nationally, but the number of Arizona claims is expected to grow.

The state’s 9.1 percent unemployment rate is expected to rise above 10 percent. Some economists believe healthy job growth won’t return until 2013.

In addition, the federal government also is expected to extend benefits. A version of the legislation, which recently passed in the U.S. House, would give qualified Arizonans up to 92 weeks of unemployment benefits, up from the current 79 weeks.

Arizona officials believe they are prepared to handle the roughly 1 percentage point jump in claims, but the technology tweaks are no guarantee of quicker payouts to more people.

A 20-year-old system

The age and design of the computer system is one reason why DES can’t improve timeliness.

For example, the software program that determines whether a person is eligible to receive unemployment money, and how much, debuted in 1989. It relies on COBOL, a computer language commonly used during the 1970s.

When applications are incomplete, a modern system can determine what information is missing. The COBOL software only determines that there is information missing.

As a result, DES employees must search for information among multiple computer programs, a frazzling task when trying to process five times the usual caseload.

DES officials estimate that 70 percent of new claims have problems that must be resolved by a staff member.

The agency’s Web site, which launched in 2001, does not allow easy updates by claimants. Users, for example, can’t log in to their cases and fix simple errors. They have to get help through the agency’s call center, contributing to the overload.

“You have a system with a mainframe core that does what it was designed to do very well, but that was a fairly rigid box,” Hillyard said.

“You’re wanting to add functionality … to allow folks not to have to call the call center.”

A question of funding

The federal government determines how much money each state gets for administration of its unemployment program. The funds come from employer taxes.

Arizona is not alone in saying it lacks the money for a major technology upgrade.

“Many states continue to have old technology and crumbling technology infrastructure as the foundation for their unemployment-insurance systems,” Tom Whitaker, president of the National Association of State Workforce Agencies, told a U.S. Senate committee last month.

“A number … have experienced system failures as they managed the massive caseloads during this recession, and some states still are at risk of system failure.”

During the past five years, on average 30 states received funding from the Labor Department that was closer to their initial requests than Arizona received, according to Whitaker’s association.

Arizona’s federal funding lagged largely because of the state’s booming economy. The Labor Department partly determines funding on the workload of previous years, and Arizona had low unemployment for most of the past decade.

Arizona did secure extra federal funds for the IAS technology upgrade, which so far has been an expensive failure.

A few years ago, Arizona joined a consortium of states and a technology unit of the Labor Department to develop the software program, which was supposed to make it easier to manage problem cases.

Other states gave up on the effort, but Arizona kept testing the system using claims of actual people. As the system kept malfunctioning, it contributed to the growing backlog, department e-mails show.

“My reaction is that this wasn’t very well done,” said Harrington, the DES assistant director, in an interview. “Clearly, when we roll out automation, we need to be much more exact and precise in how we test it.”

After three failed launches, DES reverted to its old system. Officials believe they have successfully fixed the bugs in the IAS program. They plan to relaunch it in November, hoping a fourth attempt will be the last.

August 28, 2009

The state agency that oversees unemployment benefits is vowing to fix the system after embarrassing stumbles that have angered thousands of jobless Arizonans.

Fixes include personnel changes and plans to roll out a new Web site to make the application process easier.

Arizona currently ranks behind 47 other states in terms of paying out unemployment money on time to first-time claimants.

Making matters worse, a technology meltdown earlier this month left about 46,000 filers initially unable to renew benefits online. Thousands of calls flooded the phone system, causing massive jams.

About 242,000 Arizonans have been laid off since the recession began in December 2007. That’s the worst percentage job loss in the state since the Great Depression.

To try to break the logjam, the Arizona Department of Economic Security:

* Brought in a former employee to oversee benefits, tax management, information systems and policy as well as training related to unemployment, according to department memos obtained by The Arizona Republic.

Art Olin, who retired in 2003 after more than 30 years with the DES, had worked on various agency projects recently.

Rochelle Webb, who had overseen those duties, will continue to manage several other job programs.

* Named Jim Hillyard as assistant director of the Division of Technology Services, which handles information technology. Todd Bright, who held that role, will move to the Division of Business and Finance as assistant director.

“Both Todd and Jim are business professionals with experience in systems improvement and will be taking this opportunity to find innovations and efficiencies and also take a fresh look at things,” DES Director Neal Young wrote to department staff this week.

* Plans to roll out a new Web site on Sept. 1 that it hopes will make the unemployment-application process easier. The site will remain in a test stage until its official launch in October.

“This week, we’ve been conducting focus groups consisting of people who were invited via the Web site to evaluate the new form,” department spokesman Steve Meissner said. “I’m told the response has been highly positive.”

DES officials, who have hired additional call-center employees and opened new call centers in recent months, say they are processing claims faster.

For the week ending Aug. 7, about 75 percent of first-time claimants got their money within 21 days. U.S. Department of Labor guidelines require states to be at 87 percent.

“The UI (unemployment insurance) program is under increasing scrutiny from members of the community who share the (department’s) interest in providing UI benefits quickly, efficiently and accurately to the nearly 150,000 of our fellow citizens who qualify to receive them,” Patrick Harrington, assistant director of employment and rehabilitation services, wrote to department staff.

Paul Senseman, spokesman for Gov. Jan Brewer, said Thursday that the governor has “great faith” in the plans put into place by Young to fix problems with jobless claims.

Unemployed Arizonans who have spent months fighting to get benefits report that they continue to spend hours on the phone trying to reach a live person to help sort out their problems. As they wait to collect unemployment money, their savings are drying up and they can’t pay bills. Some have lost homes, apartments and vehicles. Others have resorted to hocking valuables and skipping meals.

“Does anyone know or care about us?” Mariann Koury asked. “Remember, we’re still taxpayers.”

The Peoria resident was laid off in May and expected to get unemployment money by mid-June. Funds did arrive in July, but by her calculations, she is missing three weeks’ worth of benefits.

She said she tried to call the DES call center, Brewer’s office and the DES ombudsman’s office, but she never got an explanation for the missing funds, almost $800 before taxes.

She has given up trying to collect the money. “I got so frustrated, I said, ‘Forget it,’ ” she said.

The division within the DES that handles unemployment benefits has been plagued by problems for decades.

During the 2001 recession, for example, state officials reported that the unemployment-benefit call centers were having a tough time keeping up with demand.

“State officials suggest patience and persistence when trying to get through one of the lines,” The Arizona Republic reported at the time.

Brewer spokesman Senseman said, “The governor is very aware and very cognizant of the fact that when you put off problems for years at a time, that it’s going to have a real impact on real people and real families.

“Frankly, she is deeply disappointed that she inherited the condition of an agency that has tried hard but has not been able to receive proper attention and structuring that it needs to.”

August 16, 2009

Shirley Whattler lost her job at DHL a year ago and was living on $265 per week in unemployment benefits.

The Chandler resident was able to make partial payments on her mortgage until the money suddenly stopped in July. For weeks, she called and called the Arizona agency in charge of the program.

The few times she reached a live person, she was promised that the money was on its way. It never arrived.

Then came the bank notice.

Whattler had to make a payment on her house or foreclosure proceedings would start.

Tens of thousands of struggling Arizonans have been stuck in limbo trying to collect unemployment.

And the waiting is painful. They’re unable to find jobs. Their savings are gone. They can’t pay bills. People have lost homes, apartments and vehicles. They’ve resorted to hocking valuables and skipping meals.

The Arizona Department of Economic Security manages unemployment benefits, and it has been overwhelmed by the worst recession in decades. Department officials are apologetic and say the recession is to blame. Operations are jammed with new and continuing claims, phone lines are flooded each day, and delays in paying out money are among the worst in the country.

The U.S. Department of Labor mandates that at least 87 percent of first-time payouts should reach people in 14 to 21 days. In the past year, Arizona met that deadline 68 percent of the time. Thousands of first-time filers in the state have waited months to receive their funds.

When people try to resolve problems, it can take hours to reach a real person at a DES call center. About a decade ago, Arizona stopped accepting unemployment claims in person and moved to a phone system.

The online experience is no better. A computer problem earlier this month left an estimated 46,000 Arizonans unable to file continued claims on time. The DES Web site continues to function at minimal capacity.

Whattler struggled for six weeks to restart her unemployment benefits under a federal extension. After repeated attempts to solve the problem, the money suddenly appeared in her account last week. “It was a huge mess,” she said.

DES breakdown

In February, as the recession continued to deepen, DES reported it was receiving 10,000 to 13,000 new claims per week compared with 4,500 to 5,000 per week in February 2008.

At that time, the agency was deluged with 8,000 calls per hour. Qwest had to step in and limit the number of calls that DES’ unemployment system accepted so that callers weren’t being placed on hold for hours.

Most states are experiencing similar problems. Some, such as California and Michigan, have had to borrow billions from the federal government to continue to pay unemployment benefits.

Almost homeless

Phoenix resident Don Eamon was laid off from Kmart in February. He applied for unemployment immediately and expected benefits to start in a couple of weeks.

No money arrived in March or April.

The single, divorced father’s savings dried up. Eamon borrowed money from his ex-wife and a daughter to make ends meet. He mowed lawns. He filled out online surveys that paid a few dollars apiece.

He called DES about 50 times to check on his delayed benefits. He got through twice and was told his claim was being processed but would be delayed because of a large backlog.

Then, suddenly, the benefits arrived.

Eamon has just started a new job resetting merchandise layouts at grocery stores. He’s grateful and knows things could have been much worse.

“It’s really sad how all these people are hurting,” he said. “I was one of the lucky ones; I did not go homeless.”

Bad time

Unemployment benefits were introduced in the 1935 Social Security Act to provide a financial buffer while Americans searched for work. The program has become critical during the current deep recession.

Arizona’s job loss has been among the worst in the nation — and the steepest during any recession in the state since the Great Depression, according to Federal Reserve data.

Nearly 240,000 jobs have been shed since December 2007.

From August 2007 to August 2009, nearly 80,000 Valley homes have been foreclosed on.

Statewide bankruptcy filings were 3,174 in July, up 78 percent over July 2008 and the most since October 2005.

Worried mom

Interior designer Melinda Mattson lost her job at a Phoenix architecture firm in April and immediately filed for unemployment benefits.

Mattson expected to see a check by the beginning of May, but no money arrived. She was six months pregnant at the time.

She called and was told benefits were backlogged up to 16 weeks. There also had been a mix-up about her unused vacation time at her former job.

She continued to wait and try to contact DES again. “I couldn’t resolve (the delay) because I couldn’t talk to anybody,” she said. “I e-mailed and nobody got back.”

She waited through the summer.

Mattson got so frustrated that she called the office of U.S. Rep. Harry Mitchell, D-Ariz., which referred her to Arizona lawmakers.

The money finally arrived on July 30.

“I feel like I got a good resolution, because I ended up going to the extreme,” said Mattson, who has since given birth to a baby girl.

Promise to improve

Ellen Katz, attorney and director of the William E. Morris Institute for Justice in Phoenix, received so many complaints about Arizona’s unemployment system that her organization filed suit against DES in March to speed up benefits.

The institute, which advocates for low-income people, cited the agency’s failure to meet timeliness guidelines.

Katz dismissed the lawsuit in April after DES officials laid out steps that would be taken to improve their operations, including adding more staff.

She said she is monitoring the situation, adding that DES’ performance has improved slightly during the summer.

Missed paperwork

Phoenix secretary Tina Wells still needs answers.

She collected unemployment for a year until the money suddenly stopped coming in June. DES agents had told her that she was eligible for two federal extensions.

Wells was told the delay is partly due to the fact that the agency mistakenly thought it was missing documents, but then discovered that was not the case.

DES has repeatedly promised her that her money was coming.

She has not seen one cent.

Wells continues to look for a job. Without the unemployment benefits that were her only source of income, she has had to store her possessions at her boyfriend’s house. Her truck has been repossessed. She sold the electronics she inherited.

“I’m single. I can’t even pay my rent,” she said. “They don’t care. They’re getting their paychecks. What do they care if I get one or not?”

August 12, 2009

Job Tawk has been getting many calls and emails about our recent item about qualified Arizonans being eligible for up to 79 total weeks of unemployment benefits.

This was initially confirmed by a spokesman for the Arizona Department of Economic Security, the agency which administers the program, as well as the National Employment Law Project. The New York-based group advocates for workers.

Just to be sure, we checked again yesterday with the NELP.

It’s true. If you remain jobless and have not received 79 weeks of benefits, you must do everything to find out why. Here are the tiers in how unemployment benefits break down:

1. Standard unemployment benefits last for 26 weeks.

2. When that runs out, emergency unemployment compensation kicks in for 33 weeks.

3. Then, the federal extended benefits program kicks in for a total of 20 weeks.

That is a total of 79 weeks. While filers need to meet qualifications, most should be entitled to the money, according to experts.

We know it is difficult to reach a live human being at DES. The phone and online systems remain incredibly jammed. Plenty of people tell us they’ve waiting hours to try and get help.

You might want to try a few different routes:

Call the office of Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer. Constituent services can be reached at 800-253-0883.

Call your U.S. Senator and Congressman. Don’t know who that is? Call the U.S. Capitol switchboard toll-free at 866-220-0044 and ask the operator. 

Call your state senator and congressman. Don’t know who that is? Call the Arizona State Capitol switchboard toll-free at 800-352-8404 and ask the operator.

August 11, 2009

Arizonans who find themselves jobless for the first time face a hard financial reality when they file for unemployment benefits.

The maximum amount per week a person can earn is $240 — plus $25 from the federal stimulus legislation. That $265 per week translates into $1060 per month, before taxes.

When questioned about the low amount, state officials could always say that Arizona wasn’t dead last in the United States. We ranked higher than Mississippi and Alabama.

Unfortunately, we’ve slipped another notch.

Alabama has raised its weekly unemployment payout two times during the past year. As of last month, it pays out $265 per week, plus the $25 from the stimulus. That’s $1,160 per month.

Arizona now ranks 49th in terms of unemployment pay. Here is a list of what other states pay per week, according to the U.S. Department of Labor:

Massachusetts: $628**

New Jersey: $584

Pennsylvania: $558**

Hawaii: $545

Washington: $541

Rhode Island: $528**

Connecticut: $519**

North Carolina: $494

Oregon: $482

California: $450

Utah: $444

Colorado: $431**

Arkansas: $431

New Hampshire: $427

Vermont: $425

West Virginia: $424

Kansas: $423

Kentucky: $415 and Wyoming: $415

Oklahoma: $409

Montana: $407

North Dakota: $406

New York: $405

Nevada: $393

Texas: $392

Indiana: $390

Illinois: $385**

Maryland: $380

Virginia: $378

Ohio: $372**

Alaska: $370**

Wisconsin: $363

Idaho: $362 and Michigan: $362

Iowa: $361**

Washington, D.C.: $359 and New Mexico: $359**

Minnesota: $351**

Maine: $344**

Georgia: $330 and Delaware: $330

South Carolina: $326

Missouri: $320

Nebraska: $308

Louisiana: $284

Florida: $275

South Dakota: $298

Tennessee: $275

Alabama: $265

Arizona: $240

Mississippi: $230

*Amounts are before taxes and do not include a $25-per-week addition provided by the federal stimulus legislation.

**Filers without dependents, amount increases with dependents

August 4, 2009

State jobs officials scrambled on Monday to fix a computer-server problem that left tens of thousands of jobless Arizonans unable to renew unemployment benefits over the weekend.

Many online filers will not get their money on time, which could affect their ability to pay for basics such as food or gasoline or cause them to be late on bills. “It’s one thing to say that we’re sorry; it’s another to fix it,” said Steve Meissner, spokesman for the Arizona Department of Economic Security, which administers unemployment benefits.

“Everyone that I’m working with here is doing everything humanly possible to fix it.”

The logjam started early Sunday morning after DES installed new computer servers. It appears that one was not working, according to Meissner.

DES officials knew there was a substantial problem by Sunday afternoon, because the agency had received only about 46,000 continuing online claims — about half the usual amount. Sunday is the busiest filing day.

The remaining 46,000 or so filers initially were shut out of the system.

People must reapply for benefits every week, either electronically or by telephone, to receive continued unemployment. It usually is a relatively easy, automated process. Typically, it takes two days to receive unemployment money after filing.

Because filers could not connect to DES via the Web, they flooded phone lines, causing jams. Callers got busy signals — or no signal at all.

Diane Mistero spent most of Sunday trying to file electronically. The Gilbert resident was laid off a year ago from a bookkeeping job.

She initially thought the problem was her computer. She switched Internet browsers. She was able to connect to the DES Web site, start the process, only to be shut out.

She successfully filed by telephone, but not until 11 p.m.

“If I file on Sunday, my ($265 per week) is in my bank account by Tuesday,” she said, adding her bills had to be sent out on Monday to avoid late fees. “I count on my money being there on Tuesday.”

DES has been swamped with unemployment-benefits claims over the past year as the worst job market since the Great Depression continues to unfold. Nearly 240,000 Arizonans have lost their jobs since the recession began in December 2007.

The agency has struggled to keep up with demand and has doled out unemployment benefits at a slower pace than most states.

Arizona ranked 48th in percentage of first-time filers who got their money by the 21-day mark for the fiscal year ending June 30, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

Hours after the problem was discovered, the agency was able to get a bare-bones version of its Web site (www.azdes.gov) up and running. In theory, filers should be able to put their electronic claims through that system. Jobless Arizonans have between 12:01 a.m. on Sunday through 6 p.m. on Friday in which to file.

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday generally are reserved for certain cases, but all continuing claims may be filed on those days this week, DES said in a statement.

DES also will keep open its unemployment call center until 8:30 p.m., two hours later than normal.

Meissner said he did not know when the Web site would be at full capacity.

On Twitter: @chadwickgraham

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July 27, 2009

There’s a lot of talk about the recession entering its “final hours.”

The Dow remains above 9,000.

Sales of new homes jumped last month, according to data released today.

What does this mean for the incredibly unstable labor market? Unfortunately, not a heck of a lot in the near term.

Positive news on Wall Street — or a great month in real estate — doesn’t mean that companies are going to start immediately hiring en masse. In fact, many firms reported better-than-expected profits in the just-ended quarter because of cost-cutting. They didn’t see huge gains in revenue

Companies are probably going to continue to cut. Economists expect the nation’s unemployment rate to rise above 10 percent in the coming months.

My advice for people who still have a job? Don’t let your guard down.

Sock away savings. If you get laid off, your unemployment money from the state of Arizona may not come for weeks. My colleague Laurie Roberts has done a great job writing about those who’ve fallen through the cracks in the system. Have a cushion.

Do not become high maintenance at work. Keep your head down, work hard, prove your value to your company every single day — and make sure the boss knows it.

Social network. Join Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook to connect with as many friends, family and colleagues as possible. Get a sense of what companies are hiring, the skill set people are looking for and what recruiters are saying.

Network in person. You must join professional associations related to your job. Try the Networking Phoenix calendar to get ideas on where to meet people. Keep in regular contact with those at social groups, church, the gym and through volunteering.

Hire a professional resume writer. If you haven’t updated your resume in years and need some help, hire a professional while you still have income from a job. It can cost a few hundred dollars, but may be a good investment.

Follow the rest of Azcentral.com’s tips on how to hold onto your job.

Finally, pay attention to workforce trends of the future. I’m convinced that the recession has profoundly and permanently changed the workforce. Many, many jobs that have been lost are never coming back. The New York Times recently wrote a great piece on this topic. This is the time to take a look at your skills, education and training. Is your current career path in danger of becoming extinct?

Hang in there. The job market will recover eventually.

Still, it never hurts to plan for the worst and hope for the best.