The Employment Development Department (EDD) closed all of its unemployment offices 25 years ago, moving the staff to call centers to improve efficiency and keep them safe from disgruntled claimants. This strategy came under question when the EDD’s call center could not handle the overwhelming number of claims received at the start of the pandemic. Despite having 25 years of phone service provisioning, only fewer than 1% of the near two million calls per week received during the pandemic peak got through, according to a state audit.

The call center continued to face issues during the pandemic as agents had to work from their homes. The EDD also faced a higher threat of fraud during this period as they were no longer able to see claimants face-to-face. Despite the complexities experienced throughout the pandemic, the EDD envisaged the call center model as an efficiency measure 25 years ago, where filing an unemployment claim would take an average of just 15 minutes by phone as opposed to nearly three hours in person.

Despite the inefficiencies, the EDD call center, which is still overloaded to date, has not unveiled any plans to reopen the unemployment offices. As a solution to the EDD’s call center inefficiencies, sites like eddcaller.com are providing invaluable help to claimants. The site allows individuals to leave their contact information and receive a call back from a live person at EDD, saving them a significant amount of time and frustration. This service is a step towards improving how claimants contact EDD and get their issues resolved swiftly.