The Michigan Unemployment Insurance Agency is continuing to experience huge backlogs in the numbers of claims involving disputes or appeals, despite the recent addition of 70 workers and new phones to handle such cases.
State officials say the system is now swamped with a backlog of about 100,000 claims involving disputes, which they say is an unusually high level, the Detroit Free Press reported.
Some applicants have complained about not being able to get through on the agency’s phones and weeks of delay in resolving their claims. The problem reflects the ongoing struggle of the agency to deal with rising numbers of jobless claims.
Since December, nearly 600,000 new claims were filed for unemployment benefits -- 58,000 cases last month. With Michigan's unemployment rate continuing to lead the nation at 15.2 percent, no one is expecting the problems at the state agency to disappear anytime soon.
