Eysink says Fed ‘inaccurately’ reported La. unemployment ‘waste, fraud and abuse’

Louisiana Workforce Commission Executive Director Curt Eysink says the White House and U.S. Department of Labor have “inaccurately characterized improper unemployment payments by Louisiana as ‘waste, fraud and abuse.’ ” On Tuesday, Vice President Joe Biden released figures showing nearly $19 billion in state unemployment benefits were paid in error across the country during the three years that ended in June. Louisiana is reported to have the highest rate of improper payments of any state: 43.6%, or roughly $497 million over the past three years. “The numbers being reported by USDOL for Louisiana are not all overpayments,” Eysink says in a statement released late Thursday. “In reality, about half of the total of improper payments being reported for Louisiana contained NO overpayments or fraud of any kind. In those cases, the right people received the right amount of benefits.” The LWC maintains that improper payments stemmed from a computer error, which was corrected last year. Since then, Eysink says, the error rate has improved 89%. “The largest cause of errors today stems from claimants who continue to file for unemployment benefits after they return to work,” he says. “To combat this issue, the LWC is aggressively attacking fraud with a cutting-edge fraud-detection system.” Eysink goes on to say the initiative has resulted in 47 arrests since April and that more are pending. “I hope the errors in the federal reports from Washington, D.C., don’t cause those facts to be overlooked,” he says in closing. To see a Wall Street Journal report of the Department of Labor findings, including an interactive map, click here.