Arizona has also been a case study of the limits of technology in the teeth of a jobless crisis, government bureaucracy and people trying to game the system. My colleague Ben Casselman recently wrote about Arizona rebuilding from scratch parts of its computer system that had struggled to handle unemployment claims. The new system partially replaced one developed in the 1980s using Sputnik-era computer programming software, said Michael Wisehart, the director of the Arizona Department of Economic Security. That has allowed the state to pay within a few days a new $300 weekly supplemental unemployment insurance benefit, Wisehart said. That is good news at a time when many Americans have struggled, sometimes for months, to receive jobless payments.

Source: New York Times September 08, 2020 16:34 UTC