Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Unemployment Insurance topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Committee hears that UI trust fund is replenished and technology upgrades reduced call wait times
Summary
The commissioner said New Jersey's unemployment insurance federal loan balance is $0 and the trust fund balance is about $2.7 billion, and credited modernization — a claimant app and a cloud phone system — with faster service and fraud prevention.
Commissioner Robert Sciro Angelo told senators the state's unemployment insurance system has stabilized: the federal loan balance is currently $0 and recent collections put the trust fund balance at roughly $2,700,000,000.
The commissioner said the department has improved customer access by launching a claimant intake app in April 2024 and deploying a cloud-based phone system that reduced callback times from up to an hour to roughly 90 seconds. He also cited the department's cyber-fraud investigations unit as a national leader in identity-theft prevention and fraud mitigation.
On employer-side UI tax rates, Sciro Angelo explained that a legislature-approved decision during COVID smoothed costs across years and is why the state remains at schedule D; he projected the rate schedule could move toward schedule C around fiscal year 2027 as the impacts from that smoothing fade.
Senators pressed whether the department is prepared if a recession triggered a surge in claims. Sciro Angelo said the department's modernized systems and automated claims processing handle a large share of claims without human intervention but acknowledged very large claim surges would produce delays and that some cases will always require live staff.
