Economics
California Says Fraud Inflated Jobless Claims in Recent Weeks
- Scammers tried to reap benefits of pandemic jobless program
- PUA claims declined by 72% after action taken against scammers
Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
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Scammers appear to have inflated jobless claims numbers in California by the hundreds of thousands in recent weeks, likely making national tallies of Americans on unemployment benefits look even worse than they already were.
Between mid-August and the first week of September, applications for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance -- a federal relief program intended for self-employed workers and independent contractors -- doubled in California to more than 524,000, far above claim levels when the federal program first launched in April, the state’s Employment Development Department said Thursday.