“In response to pandemic problems, EDD unveils massive reform initiative.”
A headline that anyone has seen? Nope.
A headline that should have been seen? Yup.
A headline Governor Newsom and the legislature even remotely tried to trigger by actually doing something? Not a chance.
As President Biden has declared the pandemic over, questions now arise – is the EDD (the state’s apparently unironically named Employment Development Department) ready for another one and how much did the agency lose to unemployment benefit fraud in the last one?
As for the amount lost, that number is still a moving target. EDD claims the number is about $20 billion, or about 11 percent of the total of the about $180 billion paid out. Other estimates by security industry experts, however, put that fraud percentage rate number as possibly high 40 percent, adding that the amount is at least $32.6 billion, closer in line with the national fraud estimate of about 17 percent.
(Note – the word “about” will appear often in this item; for example, the EDD pay-out number includes everything paid through July of this year even though by then the unemployment numbers started to approach pre-pandemic levels. In other words, while the EDD states that $185 billion has been paid out in unemployment benefits, about $177 billion of that could be described as “very very pandemic” related.
Also, the federal Department of Labor stated it paid California $133.4 billion for benefits and…