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State launches Internet filing for weekly benefits

MEDIA RELASE

The state Department of Labor and Industrial Relations (DLIR) has announced unemployment insurance claimants can now file for weekly benefits online. Online filing is a welcomed option for claimants who have been filing for their weekly benefits via the current telephone system or in person.

“The Internet system is convenient, easy to use and gives claimants the opportunity to review their entries before submitting their weekly claim certification,” Darwin Ching, state labor director, said. “Ultimately, this provides a more streamlined experience for the people we are trying to serve.”

The online service is available for the weekly benefit filing procedure and is part of an overall effort to incrementally bring more unemployment filing procedures online.

Filing for weekly benefits is the most routine unemployment filing procedure and accounts for 90 percent of all filing activity. Every week, the Unemployment Insurance Division receives 36,000 weekly claims via its current telephone filing system. The Internet system can process over 5,000 claim certifications in one hour, more than 2.5 times the capacity of the current telephone filing system.

The Internet weekly filing system comes at a time of great need for Hawaii’s workforce. Hawaii’s unemployment rate was 7 percent in November 2009 – a rate that is declining, but still more than double the state’s pre-recession unemployment rate.

While providing greater convenience for claimants, the Internet weekly filing system also will improve the Unemployment Insurance Division’s staff productivity. The Internet system enables claimants to correct many of their claim filing errors online.

This translates to fewer calls to the local claims offices and more time that can be allocated to performing critical initial claims-taking activities.

The new weekly filing system is available at: http://hawaii.gov/labor/ui

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