More than $77 billion of the Unemployment Insurance (UI) program’s total of $413 billion in payments in 2021 were made improperly, according to the Inspector General (IG) for the Department of Labor (DOL).
The DOL “published an improper payment rate of 18.71 percent for the UI program, which resulted in an estimated $77.2 billion in reported gross improper payments,” the IG reported. The improper payment rate for the previous year was 9.17 percent, equal to approximately $37.8 billion.
“Additionally, DOL published an unknown payment rate of 0.21 percent, which resulted in estimated unknown payments of $865 million. These estimates were based on a statistical estimation approach that met a 95 percent confidence level, plus or minus 3 percent,” the report said….