Welcome to

For the first time since the pandemic, the Director of Department of Economic Opportunity was in a legislative hot seat answering questions about the state’s unemployment system Monday.

A 104-page report released Friday night calls for spending more than $32 million on system upgrades and the hiring of 435 people.

Director Dane Eagle said the current system was never prepared to handle the pandemic.

“You can see the great recession there about the middle of the graph, and it pales in comparison to the amount of claims we have dealt with this past year. The good news is that you can see that spike was very sharp. It went up quickly, and it’s come down very quickly as well. Now, on a nation level, those claims we are experiencing on a weekly level are close to that great recession level, but we continue to see them coming down,” said Eagle.

A bill filed for the 2021 session would raise weekly unemployment payments from $275 to $375.