Weekly Snapshot of UI Division Activity

Data for the prior week will be published to this site on Thursday.

Unemployment Week 19/21 (Week Ending May 8, 2021)

Claims Filed

Regular Unemployment Insurance (UI) Initial Applications	10,378
Regular Unemployment Insurance (UI) Weekly Claims	79,859
Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) Initial Applications	1,052
Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) Weekly Claims	31,663
Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) Initial Applications	1,628
Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) Weekly Claims	21,962
Extended Benefits (EB) Initial Applications	14
Extended Benefits (EB) Weekly Claims	404
% initial applications filed online*	88%
% weekly claims filed online	94%

*Does not include PUA

Benefits Paid

Total Benefits Paid	$67,798,484
Regular Unemployment Insurance (UI)	$14,845,141
Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC)	$12,112,304
Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA)	$4,063,363
Extended Benefits (EB)	$91,526
Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation (FPUC)	$36,277,200
Lost Wages Assistance (LWA)	$256,800
Average number of days between start of initial claim and receipt of benefits, regardless of method used to file claim.*	33

*This metric is cumulative from March 15, 2020 forward. The metric provides the amount of time from the date when a claimant starts filing a Regular UI new initial claim to the claimant's first payment (for claimants who have received a payment). We do not have information prior to the start date of the claim.

Monetary Eligibility

Claimants must have earned a minimum amount of wages to monetarily qualify for UI. If any eligibility issue is realized that issue must be adjudicated before payment is issued.

Initial applications deemed monetarily eligible	4,846
Initial applications deemed monetarily ineligible	3,347

Monitoring Workload

This chart supplies a year-over-year comparison of the adjudication workload. Note: The chart may take a few seconds to render and is not supported by the Internet Explorer (IE) browser.

On December 30, 2020, DWD reached a workload comparable to seasonal pre-pandemic levels and had either resolved or assigned out to an adjudicator all issues that were more than 21 days old, effectively clearing the unemployment insurance backlog. The UI Division measures its workload by looking at the number of pending eligibility issues that had not yet been scheduled to an adjudicator at the end of the previous week. Adjudicators are assigned eligibility issues that need to be investigated to determine whether a claimant is due benefits.

Year Over Year (Adjudication Issues Pending Scheduling)

UI Week Calendar

Adjudication

Adjudication issues scheduled	5,482
Adjudication issues pending scheduling	6,903
Average number of days issue pending until scheduled	13.87

Appeals

Appeals Scheduled	3,968
Appeals Pending Scheduling	12,323
Average age of appeals filed awaiting hearing (in days)*	78

*Federal Report ETA-9055. Updated monthly.

Awaiting Deployment of Extensions under
Continued Assistance Act (CAA) & American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA)

Mixed Earners Unemployment Compensation (MEUC)	2,400**

*Claimants who have exhausted PUA under the CARES Act; potential pool to receive PUA under CAA and ARPA. Updated monthly.

**Claimants who received regular UI and earned at least $5,000 in net earnings from self-employment; potential pool to receive MEUC under CAA and ARPA. Updated monthly.

UI Calls

Call Metrics¹	Metric Description	Metric
Attempted Calls to the UI Benefit	The Total number of attempted UI Benefit calls from CenturyLink that are directed to DWD, Alorica, and/or Beyond Vision	51,251
Exhausted Sessions / Failed Call Setups²	This metric is used to reflect "Busy Signals" as requested in the LAB UI Call Center audit (Report 20.13). For this metric we included all audible call tones that indicated a failure to complete the requested connection.	737
Completed Calls to the UI Benefit Centers	The total number of completed UI Benefit calls from Century Link that are connected to DWD, Alorica, and/or Beyond Vision.	50,514
UI Calls Presented	Presented calls includes "Completed Calls to the UI Benefit Centers". In addition, calls may be transfers among multiple agents which may be counted multiple times in this metric. Presented calls are all calls in queue for agent to answer. The presented calls may be answered or abandoned.	63,906
UI Calls Abandoned	Total number of calls disconnected waiting for an agent. This includes customer disconnected, cell service dropped call, etc.	11,154
UI Calls Answered	Calls that are successfully passed and answered by agents. Calls that are transferred among multiple agents may be counted multiple times. Excludes outbound calls.	53,815
UI Calls Blocked/Queued is Full	All calls that are blocked to the queue, with a message indicating that the queue is full. These calls are unable to reach a UI claims specialist. This metric excludes the calls that have exhausted sessions or failed call set-ups.	738
Average Speed to Answer (ASA) (minutes)	The amount of time it takes in minutes to answer a call once it has been routed to the appropriate queue (DWD definition). This metric is a weighted average speed of answer from the individual call center ASAs. The weighting is based on answered calls.	1.79
Call required after claim started online	Initial claim filed online requiring a call to a claim specialist in order for the claim to be completed	495
¹ The call metrics are under continuous research and therefore subject to change. DWD/UI uses three benefit call centers; Alorica was added 5/20/2020 and Beyond Vision was added 6/1/2020. The call metrics combines four separate, non-linked data sources. Data across different vendors may lead to some variances in the metrics.
² Exhausted Sessions/Failed Call Set-ups includes: Exhausted sessions: occur when DWD does not have any more paid sessions available for call handling. Failed call set-ups: examples include mobile phones dropping the calls or issues between the telephony providers. The callers may be able to immediately call back and connect after failed attempts. Based on the data provided by DWD's telephony provider, DWD cannot currently distinguish the difference between exhausted sessions and failed call setups. DWD continues to work with the telephony provider to see if we can obtain more discreet data.