Opinion: The Employment Security Department still is unable to meet its obligations

Mark Harmsworth critiques Washington’s Employment Security Department for ongoing inefficiencies and lack of transparency.

Mark Harmsworth believes ESD needs to consider improvements beyond the auditor’s findings, including better fund reporting transparency and individual unemployment records

Mark Harmsworth
Washington Policy Center

The complete failure of the Employment Security Department (ESD) to handle pandemic unemployment claims culminated in the resignation of ESD Commissioner Suzi LeVine in 2021. Washington lawmakers, responded by passing several key pieces of legislation requiring the agency to reform many of its internal processes and increase transparency to both the public and the legislature. Many of these recommendations were made by the Washington Policy Center in October 2020. While it seems ESD is meeting with the letter of the law, there are still problems in the agency.

Subsequent to the 2020 failures, the state auditor completed a performance audit of ESD in 2022 and found the agency still had not corrected its systemic performance and fraud problems uncovered during the COVID-19 pandemic. The auditors office has concluded that despite the appointment of Commissioner Cami Feek in June of 2021, ESD still has not implemented the required training or transparency controls required by the law passed in 2021.

‘We found ESD has partially met the law’s new requirements. However, the customer experience appears to have been minimally affected by those efforts. We made a series of recommendations to ESD to help it maximize the results of its reforms, including fully meeting legislative requirements, measurably improving the customer experience, and improving performance management.’

The situation appears not to have changed and now it’s 2025.

Recent issues with case backlogs, mistakes in refunds and lengthy call waiting queues are calling into question why the agency, after 5 years, has still not delt with systemic process issues.

Ironically, when the Washington Policy Center (WPC) filed a public records request in December to get some basic information on how ESD has staffed up to deal with the backlogs and how it was meeting its service commitments, WPC was told the data would take 3 months to produce.

An assistant records officer on the ESD staff, when quizzed on the delay to produce the data (you can see the questions WPC posed below), said, ‘The March 31, 2025 [delivery] date is an estimate which considers both the anticipated complexity of the request as well as the current workload of the involved agency personnel’

Information requested from the Employment Security Department

Service Level Agreement for call backs on the (800) 318-6022 phone line and emails/website forms submitted to the department.
Number of ESD employees assigned to respond to constituent inquiries 2020 to 2024.
Response times for cases submitted via the 800 number or by email/website forms to the department.
Closure/resolution time of cases submitted via the 800 number or by email/website forms to the department.

The data requested is not that complex and should not take 3 months to produce. Given the focus the legislature has had on ESD performance over the last few years, this information should be readily available.

ESD needs to consider improvements beyond the auditors findings, including better fund reporting transparency and individual unemployment records.

The Washington Policy Center will continue to advocate for open market solutions to reform the Employment Security Department, including improvements in,

Technical infrastructure and systems to handle benefit demand.
More transparency into ESD’s internal policies.
Fund balance reporting accuracy, data timeliness and data availability.
Individual Unemployment Accounts to protect worker benefits and to guard against repeated fraud.

For a full list of WPCs recommendations, click here.

Mark Harmsworth is the director of the Small Business Center at the Washington Policy Center.