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SACRAMENTO–

If you are one of those 66,000 Californians whose unemployment money is late by 10 days or more, the EDD doesn’t want to hear from you.

“They’re telling me don’t even bother picking up the phones in there and calling them, because I’d basically be slowing it down,” Wayne Williams told us out in front of the Sacramento EDD center.

Loree Levy is the spokesperson for the State Employment Development Department. She says the new computer system they are using to certify that people qualify for unemployment is having trouble with some applications. In those cases, technicians are having to enter the information by hand or tweak the system.

“We understand people’s frustration. We’re not happy about their hardships either. We truly all are working very hard around the clock to get this situation taken care of,” Levy said.

Levy told us that the EDD has switched to a new computer system that automates many functions of the unemployment claim processing system. She says the change is a needed one, as the old system was antiquated and the EDD has seen more than a 1,000 positions cut in the past few years.

But transferring some claims between systems has been problematic because of the old, inaccurate information that remains attached to some files. It’s been problematic to the tune of tens-of-thousands of claims, delayed ten days or more.

Last week there were 20,000 claims on that ‘back log’ status. As of Monday, the number was 50,000. Wednesday, it had climbed to 66,000.

The state is getting faster about processing those late claims, but not fast enough so far to keep up. So how long will that number continue to grow?

“That’s what we’re certainly looking at as well. But we’re looking at all these different things we are putting in place. We just have to speed along this manual adjustment we are putting in place,” Levy said.

And the more speed the better for folks who say they have a legitimate claim to unemployment but aren’t getting the money.

“I went to checked the balance and there was a dollar on there, so I have no money for gas,” said Phillip DeVaughn, also out in front of the Sacramento EDD office where frustrations are running high.