Español

Stronger Jobs, Stronger Communities

Labor Day celebrates the California workers who help build strong communities. California experienced healthy job growth in 2024, averaging 18,071 nonfarm jobs gained per month. The State has completely recovered the 2.7 million jobs lost during the Pandemic, and in several industries, eclipsed job growth gained before the Pandemic. As of August 2024, California’s economy now includes more than 18.1 million jobs – a total of 3,141,900 more jobs in the State than were in place prior to the pandemic outbreak.

We honor the hard work, dedication, and resilience of every California worker who contributes to our State’s prosperity. On our featured webpage for Labor Day, Stronger Jobs, Stronger Communities, we highlight our commitment to the State’s workforce development system and the many resources available for job seekers and employers.

This includes our annual California Jobs Market Briefing (PDF) that shows important labor market trends. Our social media campaign starting this month highlights California’s top occupations with the most projected job openings in each of California’s 15 economic regions. Our partnership with the America’s Job Center of California (AJCC) network and CalJOBS are also being highlighted. These are great resources for job seekers looking for their next career adventure, and for employers to find qualified candidates to hire.

We are humbled to honor the history and achievements of California workers, like U. S. Navy veteran Darien O’Neal, who overcame challenges translating his military career experience into easily understood civilian job qualifications to land the new job he was seeking. When Darien succeeds, we all do too!

 

---

Direct Deposit Successfully Debuts

Since our successful launch of direct deposit nearly 400,000 EDD customers have enrolled in direct deposit. That’s more than 70 percent of our benefit customers selecting direct deposit as their payment option. These customers securely receive their benefit payments automatically into their personal bank accounts. EDD customers can easily choose the payment option that meets their needs after first logging in to myEDD.

Direct deposit is a safe, fast, and convenient way for unemployment, disability, and Paid Family Leave payments to automatically go to a personal bank account. New or returning customers can choose their payment option when they apply online for any of our benefit programs. Existing customers can update their payment option after first logging in to myEDD.

Visit Benefit Payment Options to see the unique features and payment schedules. You’ll also find detailed instructions and helpful videos on how to enroll in direct deposit. We released How to Set Up Direct Deposit (Online) for Unemployment Benefits (YouTube), and How to Set Up Direct Deposit (Online) for Disability and Paid Family Leave Benefits (YouTube) to deliver step-by-step instructions on how to enroll in direct deposit and take advantage of this enhancement.

We are committed to help our customers get their payments quickly and safely when choosing direct deposit. We will never email, text, or call to ask for login information or bank account details to enroll in direct deposit. Be cautious of unsolicited emails or text messages that request personal or financial information with a sense of urgency. EDD emails only contain links to websites that include “edd.ca.gov.” Visit our Help Fight Fraud webpage for tips on how to avoid scams.

---

The Support You Need, When You Need It Most

From time to bond with your newborn, support to find a job, resources to focus on your recovery after an illness or injury, or the guidance and support to manage a successful business in California, we have a resource that can help.

In 2024, we successfully launched direct deposit and transitioned our prepaid debit card program to Money Network. Unemployment customers can now apply online with applications translated into the top eight most-commonly spoken languages in the State. For information about more customer improvements, visit EDDNext.

We are making great strides to meet our customers where they work, live, and gather. This includes in-person education and community engagement across the State. We have participated in over 10 community-based events so far this year – attended by over 139,000 Californians – who got an opportunity to see and talk to an EDD representative about our programs and services where they live.

We’re actively collaborating with ethnic media outlets to speak directly to their diverse audiences and spread awareness of our benefit programs and the changes taking place here at the EDD. Through these efforts we’ve reached nearly 16 million people across California’s diverse landscape. We’ve made great progress through Chinese, Vietnamese, and Filipino media in addition to millions of impressions across focused Black and African American media channels.

We’re increasing our communications to the nearly 250,000 people who subscribe to the Department’s social media channels. This includes a new video about the breadth of EDD programs and services.

We appreciate your support in helping us spread the word about how valuable our programs and resources are, and we’re looking forward to more updates as our efforts progress.

---

EDD is Modernizing Document Management to Improve Service Delivery

EDD's Document and Information Management Center uses advanced technologies to process mail, scan and store information, process transactions, and much more. These services help EDD collect employment taxes (we’re the largest tax collection agency in the nation, other than IRS), and process documents for unemployment, disability, and Paid Family Leave programs. In State Fiscal year 2023-2024 the EDD processing 9.1 million documents and deposited over $822 million.  

We are taking action to continue modernizing these systems to ensure we provide the best possible services to our customers.

At any given time, we process up to 400 different forms from customers and currently 60 percent of these do not benefit from document management technology. The new investments we are making will allow us to automate this processing and save time for our customers. The goal is to improve the customer and employee experience by digitizing and streamlining manual processes, automating workflows, and reducing manual data entry. Our employees will be able to spend more time helping customers and less time manually processing paperwork.

---

Continuing to Boost Customer Satisfaction

Since 2016, our Survey and Applied Research team has surveyed thousands of our customers annually to help identify what’s working and spotlight opportunities for improvement.

Customer satisfaction with the unemployment claim process fell in the early days of the COVID-19 Pandemic but has continued to recover. 78 percent of customers surveyed in 2023 were completely or mostly satisfied with the unemployment benefits process—up from 69 percent in 2022 and the highest observed in the last four annual surveys. Ninety-one percent of respondents who used UI Online rated opening or reopening their claims was very easy or somewhat easy, a nine point increase over 2022.

---

Resolving Unemployment Eligibility Issues Faster and More Securely

By law, the EDD must determine if a person meets the legal requirements to receive benefits. While the vast majority of benefits issue quickly, a small percentage of claims require customers provide more information. In the past, this required a scheduled phone interview with an EDD representative. This year, customers have been able to complete an online questionnaire quickly and conveniently.

More than 35,000 customers have received online questionnaires instead of waiting for a phone interview. On average, eligibility issues are now completed in less than six days. When compared to a phone interview process that often took many weeks, this is significant progress!

In September, we are expanding the eligibility issues available to unemployment customers through the online questionnaire, including information needed when a worker quit their job, is unavailable to work, or did not complete work search activities. Customers will also be able to respond to questions about their eligibility for the California Training Benefits program. This update will allow more customers to use the fast and convenient online form to provide supporting documents and information.

EDD will continue modernizing to improve the customer and employee experience with enhancements just like the online Eligibility Questionnaire.

---

Elevating our Customer Experience Program with Qualtrics

As part of our pledge to put customers first, we have a Voice of the Customer program to gather information about what is working and what needs improvement.

This spring, we began working with Qualtrics, a leading customer experience management company, to further grow our Voice of the Customer program and capture feedback across the various ways Californians interact with the EDD, such as through our call centers, online applications, social media, website, and offices.

In June we introduced new surveys on the EDD website and in Tax and America’s Job Center of California offices. This is in addition to the surveys that the Disability Insurance Branch offers in their offices. We have received over 3,500 survey responses and will use this data to better understand customer preferences and experiences when they visit us online or in an office to ensure our services meet their needs.

Our Voice of the Customer program coupled with customer research and testing supports EDD modernization efforts and ensures we provide Californians services that are easy, reliable, and empathetic.

---

EDD By The Numbers