OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) – Many people who are filing for unemployment have blamed the outdated Oklahoma Employment Security Commission’s website for problems with their unemployment claims.
Starting Wednesday, the website will be modernized on both the front and back end.
“We kind of had two different websites going and they had a very different look and feel. There’s one that looked like it was from 2020 and another one that looked like it was from 1995. And so what this was was a giant project to bring these two websites together,” OESC Interim Director Shelley Zumwalt said.
There will be a new message center on the front page with the latest updates.
“If there’s a phone outage or if there’s an issue where they’re going to open late or something like that, people will have that information ready to them because I know that’s where people are going to say, ‘Oh, is this where I go to get my claim processed?’” Zumwalt said.
There will also be a job center link where you can create an account and search for a job.
The OESC interim director says this is important as first time filers go down, but more people are continuing to claim their weekly benefits, which she says means people aren’t finding new jobs.
“We do want people to feel like we’re taking them to that next step,” Zumwalt said.
“We’re very much in this place where we don’t know what next month holds, maybe not even next week but eventually, we will see the initial claims go down,” she added.
This as Oklahoma businesses reopen, and coronavirus cases increase.