by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
Even Fitch weighs in on the data chaos.
California’s Employment Development Department (EDD), which handles unemployment claims, has been getting hammered for months by reports about its huge backlog of processing unemployment insurance (UI) claims; about people not being able to get through to even start their UI claims; about people being on hold for hours and then giving up; about people who, when they finally got through to someone, weren’t being helped because the newbie at the EDD couldn’t actually help them…. This led to under-reporting of the number of people seeking UI.