Chaos in California’s unemployment insurance program

Long before the COVID-19 shredded California’s economy, the state’s unemployment insurance program was deeply troubled.
Thanks to a decades-long political stalemate, the unemployment system, managed by the Employment Development Department (EDD), had scant reserves to handle a recession. The unemployment fund had been sharply depleted during the Great Recession and EDD officials had warned for years that the fund was deficient, but nothing was done.
Moreover, the Great Recession