Last week the Unemployment Fund received around 2143 new earnings-related unemployment allowance applications, over 2 240 were processed
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For the time being, the processing time for incoming first unemployment allowance applications to the Unemployment Fund is 45 working days.
The coronavirus pandemic has sharply increased the number of applications to PAM’s Unemployment Fund. The processing got jammed for incoming first applications during week 16 and 17. The total number of applications were over 12 500.
During last week, the Unemployment Fund received 2143 first applications. A first application is an application where earnings-related unemployment allowance is claimed for the first time or after a break of over 6 months.
During the week, the Unemployment Fund processed 2245 first applications. The processing time for applications was 45 working days. The long processing time is due to the huge amount, 12 500, of incoming first applications during the weeks 16 and 17 causing a jam in the system. Under normal circumstances, for instance during the whole year 2019, a total of 18,235 first applications arrived, when the amount of incoming applications during only April this year was 18,403.
A part from first applications, there is also a great number of follow-up applications beeing processed by the Unemployment Fund. There were also 5555 calls to the fund’s helplines, and staff were able to answer 1039 of these.
PAM’s Unemployment Fund has taken a number of steps to deal with the sharp increase in applications. Last week the Unemployment Fund launched the use of a robot to speed up the processing with the initial stages in applications. Application processing capacity has been increased e.g. by reorganising work internally and speeding up work processes. The Unemployment Fund has also recruited new employees. Some union employees have also transferred to the fund to help out with the workload.
Each week we publish the number of applications received and processed the previous week. We also give the number of answered telephone calls from members and the current application processing time. We are collecting this data in one place to make it easier to see how the situation is progressing. Check here for more information.