Unemployed strained by system

CLEVELAND (AP) - With unemployment in Ohio soaring to levels not seen in a decade, those out of work and the state workers trying to help them are strained by the government's assistance system.

"I've been here since '72, and this is one of the worst periods of time I've seen since then in terms of the staff's ability to keep up," said Pat Castro, an employment services coordinator at the Department of Job and Family Services' office in downtown Toledo. "The stress levels in the local offices are out the roofs."

Weary claims processors say that long lines at the local offices, phones that never stop ringing and data-entry errors being made by temporary claims-takers are making it difficult to keep up with the nearly 22,000 new claims being filed every week.

During the week that ended Jan. 4, for instance, nearly 206,000 people tried to call the centers, but only 16,000 of the calls were answered, The Plain Dealer reported Sunday. That's still an improvement over last year when as many as 800,000 calls a week went unanswered.

The recession and the switch to a new phone system follow a contracting scandal that led to putting Hayes in charge of an agency created in the summer of 2000 when the Ohio Bureau of Employment Services and the Department of Human Services were merged.