Unemployment checks stalled for more people than originally thought

The number of Californians who didn’t get unemployment checks for weeks, because of computer problems, is significantly higher than previously thought. An investigation by the Los Angeles times cites internal Employment Development Department emails, which show as many as 300-thousand claims were stalled, when a software upgrade went on-line over Labor Lay weekend. The department previously said 80-thousand people were affected. The State Assembly will hold a hearing to determine what went wrong with a system that cost taxpayers $110 million dollars. Some blame the department’s slow response created the massive backlog. Others are pointing fingers at a contractor which was hired to do the upgrade.