If there’s a list of who wasn’t prepared for a global pandemic-induced economic recession, the Illinois Department of Employment Security (IDES), the state’s unemployment agency, would be right up with about everyone else.

Nearly half a million Illinoisans found themselves out of work and looking for unemployment benefits at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic last spring. Benefits seekers overwhelmed a system which already had cracks in it. Wednesday was the first time Illinois senators were able to get answers for what’s being done to patch holes in the proverbial boat taking on water.

“The pandemic created massive unemployment, impacting over a million people in Illinois,” said Sen. Linda Holmes (D-Aurora), the chair of the Illinois Senate Labor Committee. “That many people losing their jobs completely overwhelmed the system. Our offices were flooded with calls from constituents who were having difficulties navigating the system, getting through, getting a call back, receiving payments or reporting fraud.”

Both Republican and Democratic senators were mostly empathetic with Interim IDES Director Kristin Richards, who was appointed to lead the agency in August.

“We are responding, paying out a record amount of benefits, bringing new technology solutions to the table, scaling up our staff and making other quick, rapid changes to the extent that we’re able,” Richards said during the marathon three-hour hearing conducted online.

Richards, a longtime aide to former Senate President John Cullerton, said $20 billion in benefits had been paid out during the pandemic. She said the agency has been shrinking in size for years and then had to deal with a surge of unemployment requests “an order of magnitude Illinois has never experienced before”. At its peak, IDES was taking 1.8 million calls a day and only had about 100 people to answer those calls, she said. About 1500 contractual agents have been trained in the last ten months to handle added calls.

“Starting last March, the Department was sucking water out of a firehose and I think for the first several months, everybody understood,” said Sen. Chapin Rose (R-Mahomet), a frequent critic of the Pritzker administration response to the COVID-19 pandemic. “You’re going to hear a lot of questions, concerns about a lot of things that 11 months later still are not working.”

Richards said IDES was now handling two and a half times as many calls as they were able to take before the pandemic. The agency switched to a callback system so people don’t have to wait on hold for hours. She said the turnaround time to get a call back is typically seven to ten days, but it can be as long as four to six weeks for people who are calling about an appeal or adjudication since those are specialized cases.

“That is less than ideal for an individual who is dying for an answer for the Department of Employment Security,” Richards said.

IDES offices have extended hours in the call center, but the offices are closed for in-person visits. Richards said there have been credible security threats, like someone throwing a trailer hitch through a window at the Springfield office, but it also allows them to be more efficient handling online and phone inquiries. Richards said she didn’t want long lines of people waiting outside IDES offices.

“Not only, for us, is it moving forward to reopen in a manner that’s, of course, safe for everyone, but it also gives us the most productive return on our results and avoids any kind of chaotic situation for the claimants that would be coming to see us,” Richards said. “We do not want to create a chaotic circumstance like they’ve seen in other states.”

In case getting an unprecedented amount of unemployment benefits out during a pandemic wasn’t daunting enough, there’s the surge in fraudulent applications complicating matters that much more.

“We are battling nationwide, widespread fraud in the unemployment systems,” Richards said. “This is largely stemming from identity theft. Imposters serving as legitimate claimants, using stolen personal identifying information to file for benefits. This is a nationwide issue.”

Richards said the agency had stopped a million fraudulent attempts but couldn’t say how many investigations might be open or how much money had been recovered because those cases were referred to various law enforcement agencies.

Rose was clearly the most frustrated with the persistent issues unemployed Illinoisans have dealt with, unexpected pandemic aside.

“McDonald’s is open,” Rose said. “Our legislative offices are open. Banks are open. There’s really no reason that in 11 months, we couldn’t have put the plexiglass up, done their handling systems, done what everyone else has done, quite frankly.”

Each senator had stories of cases of people in their community who had struggles with IDES in unique ways. Even Rose acknowledged the system may work for 98 percent of people, but he said the remaining two percent falling through the cracks still deserved better.

“For whatever reason, that algorithm put 98 percent of the people in the right bucket, but for that one to five percent, it didn’t and then the algorithm just stopped on them,” Rose said. “For the group that is caught and stuck in the algorithm, there has to be some better way 11 months in to address these needs.”

Illinois hasn’t been the only state struggling to keep its head above water with unemployment benefits. IDES said it was first among large states in getting first payments to applicants and continued payments within two weeks.

Richards outlined areas where IDES has been frantically trying to improve a rickety computer system, staff challenges, and an unprecedented demand. While the agency continues to work to improve the system, it leaves little comfort to thousands of Illinoisans who are struggling to find answers.

Ben Garbarek

@bengarbarek ben@theillinoize.com