MACON, Ga. — Many Central Georgians are frustrated with the lack of response from the Georgia Department of Labor over unemployment benefits.
13WMAZ spoke with the Director of Communications for Georgia’s Department of Labor, Kersha Cartwright, to understand what is going on.
“When everyone is calling to try and see when they're going to get their payments, that call volume is huge, and we're trying to get those returned,” said Cartwright.
Cartwright said they've built six different systems over the past year to try and ease some of the delays.
“We had a system that was built for 3% unemployment rate when all of this started -- much lower than what we're dealing with now," she said.
According to the state's Department of Labor, the unemployment rate is now 5.6%.
Cartwright said it wasn’t only that the system wasn’t ready for this boom of claims, but the number of employees they originally had were not ready either.
“We're dealing with employees that were hired for a much lower claim volume," she said.
Cartwright said they've recently hired close to 400 people, and are adding a calling center to help answer questions in the near future.
“It's a lot. People are very worried, but we're working seven days a week to get people their money as soon as possible,” said Cartwright.