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Comment by elliekelly | Hacker News Reader

I guess I don’t really understand why unemployment payments don’t “come” from the (former) employer? They already know the direct deposit details and have a rough idea of the eligibility. It seems like the easy solution would be for a partial “paycheck” to keep being deposited and have the state make payments to the employer, instead.

If Acme Corp. gets an unemployment claim for an employee who’s still working they’re in a much better position to quickly recognize the fraud. And if they get a legitimate claim for a former employee but to a previously unknown bank account it’s easy enough for them to get in touch with the employee to double check the details.

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Acme Corp's unemployment insurance premiums go up when their employees file claims. It's in their interest to deny claims. You'd be moving fraud around somewhat.

Is it possible that the total fraud would be lower because most businesses would prefer to follow the law and not be busted? Maybe, but it's hard to say.

In California the UI office will get in touch with your former employer to verify your claim. So there's that at least. Not to mention, what do you do when people lose their jobs because the employer has gone out of business?

I had someone file for unemployment in my name. I got an email from our Human Resources telling me my unemployment claim was rejected because I’m still employeed, with some information about what to do next if I hadn’t filed the claim (I hadn’t)

Unemployment insurance is part of the social safety net that is paid to the State. Among many other issues with tying this to the employer (much like with healthcare), the employer may not even exist anymore but the former employee is still entitled to unemployment.

States that weren’t doing it from the beginning did start checking with employers to determine if a person was actually unemployed.

I've had several former employers I wouldn't have wanted to maintain any sort of relationship with, for reasons up to and including them being likely to try some sort of mitm shenanigans and commit the fraud themselves.

I think this situation might be a strong case for better id verification and ubi. We've got the cryptographic tools, the funding, and the evidence that other systems are failing terribly. We just need the political will and legislative implementation - Yang had a great foundation for it.

> I guess I don’t really understand why unemployment payments don’t “come” from the (former) employer?

So now employees are financially reliant on employer that just fired them?

I think this is a bad idea as well, but you're not eligible for unemployment if you've been fired.

you're eligible if you've been wrongfully terminated. if you're fired for showing up drunk to work then that's termination for cause, and you can't get unemployment, but if you're fired because your boss decides he wants a blond secretary and you're a brunette, you can absolutely collect unemployment.

If you're fired for cause.

It's make more sense for them to be distributed by the tax authorities, but we love to do things the stupid way.

The tax authorities don’t do such a great job of making sure they send the money to the right people either.

Unemployment benefits in the US are distributed by the tax authorities, i.e. state governments.

No. In California, for example, unemployment is handled by the Employment Development Department, taxes are handled by the Board of Equalization.

It is still the CA government, the important point being they would have access to same information and privileges.

I think you're missing the point that the tax authorities tend to have relatively up-to-date information because most people file tax returns annually.

'It's all the government' isn't helpful because government is large and complex and doesn't have any kind of central consciousness. You are conflating legal sovereignty with (the authority by which government operates) with operational efficiency.

That can probably be fixed with a flick of the pen by the governor. The point is, the problem is simply clerical, not organizational or otherwise difficult to overcome.

Imagining a thing and promulgating it through a messy and extremely inconsistent organization like a state government are two different things. Surely you've experienced the situation where an apparently simple concept requires a surprisingly large amount of code and time to implement.

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