KANSAS CITY, Mo. — As thousands of Kansans continue to encounter problems filing for unemployment on an overloaded, decades-old system, officials announced Thursday that people should now file claims on certain days of the week.
In a daily briefing with Gov. Laura Kelly, Kansas Department of Labor Secretary Delia Garcia said that people whose last names begin with the letters A through M should file their claims on Sunday afternoons, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Those whose last names begin with N through Z should file claims on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
Saturdays will be reserved for those who previously have been unable to file a weekly claim.
Garcia said that claims filed on Sunday or Monday will still be paid at the same time, so there is no disadvantage to those who file on Mondays.
The new filing system mirrors those enacted in other states, including Colorado. Garcia said officials there shared information with Kansas about implementing the process, called "gating."
Garcia also said that beginning Thursday, the Kansas Department of Labor will begin hiring a couple dozen new employees. Those employees will be trained in smaller classes every two weeks.
While that training traditionally takes six months, Garcia said it will now be done in about three weeks.
"There is a light at the end of this tunnel, and we are moving towards it," Garcia said at the briefing.
Kelly has previously expressed her frustrations with what she calls an "antiquated" system that dates back to the late 1970s. She said that attempts to modernize the system were halted in 2011, under then-Gov. Sam Brownback's administration.
"During that entire administration, there was a concerted effort to really reduce expenditures, and that resulted in a number of projects that had been started being stopped," Kelly said.
Kansas Department of Administration Secretary DeAngela Burns-Wallace, also speaking at the briefing, said the problem with the system stems from the mainframe, which is more than 40 years old. She said the surge in claims over the last month "truly overloaded" the system without completely breaking it.
She said a temporary shutdown of the site on Tuesday "significantly" increased the capacity of the system. That day, she said more than 4,000 initial claims were processed, along with slightly more than 42,000 weekly claims.
Before that, she said about 14,000 claims were being averaged per day.
"So you can see we’re moving in the right direction to increase that capacity, but there is definitely more to be done, and we will continue to monitor and be diligent in this process," Burns-Wallace said.
Currently, the state has suspended the ability for residents to check on their claims status. Burns-Wallace said that checking on a claim ties up the system as much as filing one.
While work continues to restore access to that feature on the website, Burns-Wallace said the Department of Labor will be providing a chart that shows an estimate of when people should receive benefits based on the day they filed.
According to the Department of Labor, 58,818 residents received unemployment last week, but that number underscores the issue residents are having reporting and getting reimbursed for claims.
