Unemployment benefit fraud possibly topped $60 billion during pandemic, GAO says
Misty Severi
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Unemployment insurance benefits fraudulently obtained during the COVID-19 pandemic have possibly reached $60 billion, according to a report from the United States Government Accountability Office that was released Monday.
The U.S. Labor Department reported fraud estimates were about $8.5 billion for normal unemployment insurance programs in 2021, but another four unemployment programs were created by the government during the pandemic.
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The GAO claimed that the amount of fraud in the four government programs had increased, and that the total fraud was more than $60 billion, or possibly even higher. The government paid out approximately $878 billion in unemployment insurance benefits between April 2020 and September 2022, according to the Labor Department.
The federal watchdog noted that the government has taken steps to address the fraud issues, but that more should be done. Some steps the department has taken include issuing guidance and providing funding to states. However, it has failed to create an anti-fraud strategy based on the GAO’s Fraud Risk Framework and has not fixed recommendations the office made in October 2021.
The new report, which notes that the unemployment insurance industry has long dealt with integrity issues, comes ahead of a congressional hearing led by the House Oversight and Accountability Committee in February. The hearing will focus on the excess of taxpayer money on COVID-19 relief programs.
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“We owe it to Americans to identify how hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars spent under the guise of pandemic relief were lost to waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement,” Rep. James Comer (R-KY), the committee’s chairman, wrote in a statement. “For the past two years, the Biden Administration has allowed fraud to run rampant in federal assistance programs and Democrats in Congress conducted little oversight.”
The GAO estimate is higher than the estimate from the Inspector General’s report in September, which estimated $45.6 billion in pandemic unemployment benefits may have been fraudulently paid between March 2020 and April 2022.