Federal grant helps state improve access to jobless benefits

By PETER WONG/Oregon Capital Bureau — Oregon will spend more than $4.5 million from a new federal grant, one of four in the nation, to improve its reach to people who have trouble obtaining unemployment benefits.

Acting Director David Gerstenfeld said the grant will enable the Oregon Employment Department to build on what it started at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic two years ago, when a surge of benefit claims overwhelmed the staff. Many claims were from people who had never applied for help or were unfamiliar with the process.

“We have listened to the needs that were voiced by Oregon’s diverse communities,” Gerstenfeld told reporters at a virtual briefing Wednesday. “We have quickly applied strategies that have improved access.

“However, we know we are still not meeting the needs of all Oregonians, especially those in underserved communities. We want to do better. This grant will help us reach those people who really need our services, but have not been able to access them.”

The agency will build on its expansion of written and website materials in languages other then English, outreach to community groups that can help people navigate the system, and one-on-one meetings between staff and workers who need help.

A new unit within the agency will focus on equitable access to unemployment benefits.

Among the groups that the new efforts will focus on are Black people, Hispanics, Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, Native Americans, immigrants, people with disabilities, people whose primary language is not English, and people who are poor.

Money also will be spent on collecting information that the agency can use to measure and improve its efforts.

One of four

Other jurisdictions that received similar grants were Pennsylvania, Virginia and Washington, D.C.

“These grants are the first of their kind to advance equity in state unemployment insurance programs,” said U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, whose agency oversees those programs. “To become a more robust safety net and economic stabilizer, our unemployment insurance system must serve all workers fairly and equitably.”

Efforts have stalled in Congress to overhaul some aspects of unemployment benefits after Congress created a host of temporary federal benefit programs in 2020 and 2021. Basic benefits go back to 1935.

One of the champions of change is Sen. Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democrat who leads the Senate Finance Committee, which oversees the payroll tax system that employers pay into to support benefits on a state level.

Wyden had been critical of the Oregon Employment Department when it fell far behind in processing hundreds of thousands of claims that piled up in the early weeks of the pandemic, when businesses closed or curtailed operations and thousands lost their jobs or took pay cuts. In a move he later said was a rare intervention in state government affairs, Wyden called on Gov. Kate Brown to fire the director. Brown did so on May 30, 2020, and named Gerstenfeld acting director. He had led the unemployment insurance division from 2011 to 2019, when he was moved over to lead the paid family medical leave program under development.

“While the Oregon Employment Department continues to work tirelessly to get benefits out the door as quickly as possible, I’m gratified to see federal dollars going to help the state address equity issues head-on,” Wyden said in a statement.

The Oregon Capital Bureau in Salem is staffed by reporters from EO Media and Pamplin Media Group and provides state government and political news to their newspapers and media around Oregon, including Highway58Herald.org