By WECT Staff | June 12, 2020 at 4:21 PM EDT – Updated June 12 at 9:29 PM
NORTH CAROLINA (WECT) – The Department of Employment Security (DES) processed around 8,600 more claims in the seven days since announcing strategies to resolve unemployment benefit claims more quickly.
By implementing strategies to speed up the processing of claims and placing priority on resolving claims that were filed earliest, the DES has made significant progress with the backlog.
Just seven days ago, the DES had around 57,000 outstanding claims older than three weeks that were pending resolution.
In the past two weeks, the DES has resolved more than 24,000 of the earliest claims for unemployment benefits that were filed in the first two months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
As of Friday, June 12, more than 1,036,000 people have filed claims for unemployment assistance in North Carolina since mid-March.
More than 690,000 North Carolinians received a total of $3.7 billion in unemployment benefits since mid-March.
The number of outstanding claims filed that are older than three weeks is steadily decreasing and approximately 45,000 are still pending resolution.
On June 8, the DES introduced a new online claims status tracker so claimants can get visual updates on the progress of their claim without having to speak to a representative.
Claimants can also get updates by phone.
On Friday, the DES also began providing an updated online data dashboard on the unemployment benefits data page to provide regular updates about the unemployment benefits process to the public.
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