Remember how hard it was to file for unemployment during COVID? NJ made changes

Easier questions. A mobile-friendly website. The ability to save your progress on the application.

These are some of the changes coming to New Jersey’s online unemployment application process, meant to make it easier, after the strains the beleaguered system underwent during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

State officials unveiled the new application on Tuesday, with the goal of revamping the old, difficult and confusing process.

“With this new process, we can completely overhaul an application that was long overdue for an upgrade,” Gov. Phil Murphy said during a virtual press briefing Tuesday morning.

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States were deluged with an unprecedented number of unemployment claims in 2020 as governors ordered businesses to close as a tactic to stem the spread of COVID.

Many applicants had trouble filing claims as systems crashed. In addition, they had to navigate the confusing application language, and couldn't reach help through agency phone lines. Many claimants saw delays in payments for weeks or months.

The federal government made more workers eligible for benefits than before, including freelancers and gig economy workers, and states struggled to adapt rigid and outdated systems to the changes.

State officials said that with easier, more intuitive questions, there’d be less of a chance for someone to answer the question incorrectly — many times due to simple confusion over the question — making it less likely under the new process for the applicant to need human intervention and lengthen the unemployment process.

The New Jersey Department of labor and Workforce Development said most of the issues it encountered during the pandemic occurred “because of the web of complex federal laws and processes that require us to verify workers’ information, receive and review wage records — often from multiple parties and multiple states.”

In 2021, the U.S. Department of Labor selected New Jersey and Arkansas for a pilot program to revamp the application process. Now federal labor officials are funding 18 other states to upgrade their applications.

What are the changes?

The new changes include fewer questions, so New Jerseyans now have “an easier, friendlier experience with unemployment insurance,” said New Jersey Labor Commissioner Robert Asaro-Angelo, whose agency oversees the state’s unemployment system.

One change involves the question, “Are you ready, willing and able to immediately work full time?”

Applicants were answering the question in a way that did not accurately reflect their circumstances, state officials said.

And so the question was reworked to ask, “Can you start full time work immediately,” and includes hints on what the question means.

The application now features a mobile-only format when used on a phone; previously, the clunky desktop website would appear when the application was being filled out on a mobile phone. The application will also be available in Spanish.

And applicants can save their progress for up to two weeks in the event that they do not have all the necessary information to accurately answer a question and must return to the application at a later time.

There were also technology updates to the state's unemployment call center, so that more claimants are able to get their information through the self-serve or web-based options, said Dave Cole, the state’s chief innovation officer.

Many confusing "if, then" questions were removed as well, labor officials said.

The new format was rolled out and tested on 10% of applicants, then 50% of applicants in February, labor officials said. The new application process was fully rolled out on April 11.

Antiquated system

Despite the changes, New Jersey’s unemployment system is still reliant on 40-year-old mainframe computers using an even older programming language called COBOL, short for “Common Business Oriented Language.”

The aging systems had been flagged as "becoming obsolete" in a 2003 labor department presentation, and despite warnings to Murphy and the state's pouring tens of millions into fixes, they have not been completely updated.

During the pandemic, the crush of unemployment claims bested those systems' workload. State officials said there are long-term plans to phase out COBOL, but nothing concrete.

“Rather than start with replacing the hardest, most intractable part of the system, we work to shore that up, bringing on more folks with COBOL experience since the start of the pandemic… and then make improvements that the users are seeing and working with directly,” said Cole, the state's chief innovation officer.

Daniel Munoz covers business, consumer affairs, labor and the economy for NorthJersey.com and The Record. 

Email: munozd@northjersey.com; Twitter:@danielmunoz100 and Facebook

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Filing for unemployment in NJ has improved