Over 103,000 Nebraskans have filed for unemployment in the last two months, setting a record for claims in the state.
At Governor Pete Ricketts' daily coronavirus briefing on Thursday, Nebraska Labor Commissioner John Albin said, "We've taken in three years' worth of claim in two months time, and have made it through about two years worth of claims so far."
Requests for unemployment were down to about 8,000 claims this week from the peak of 24,000 at its highest. Ricketts says he is waiving a statute in an effort to speed up the process of paying unemployment claims. He is allowing adjudicators to check only the last place of employment instead of all previous places of employment for people applying for assistance.
Albin says checking only employees' most recent employment will speed up the process for issuing unemployment benefits. He also says the state is also working to find a way to pull out older claims to prioritize them for payment. "We recognize there are some out there that have been allowed to languish too long."