The Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry has distributed nearly $16.5 billion in unemployment benefits since the COVID-19 pandemic began in March and is now preparing for the extended benefits period.

“We've paid out $16.4 billion since March,” Jerry Oleksiak, secretary of the department, said Monday during an online media update on unemployment compensation.

Of that sum, $8.4 billion has come from the state unemployment compensation program, $6.8 billion has come from the federally funded Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation program for people whose regular unemployment benefits have expired or are about to expire, $1.1 billion has come from the federally funded Pandemic Unemployment assistance campaign for people unemployed for COVID-19-related reasons and $91 million is in extended benefits, Oleksiak said.

State employment service center employees have logged 147,000 hours of overtime processing claims and answered 225,000 phone calls since the pandemic began. He said 10.7 million bi-weekly unemployment claims have been filed since March 15. The state hired 312 additional employees for those centers, increasing staff by 80 percent to 1,491 people, he said.

The week ending July 4 will be the first payable week for the nine- to 13-week extended benefits period available to people whose PEUC benefits expired, said Susan Dickinson, department benefits policy director.

She said the extended benefits period was triggered by the state's insured unemployment rate reaching 5.8 percent for the week ending April 18 and 256 percent of the average rate during the corresponding period in the two previous years.

Under federal law, a state must provide up to 13 weeks of extended benefits if the insured unemployment rate reaches at least 5 percent and if the IUR is at least 120 percent higher than it was during the same period in each of the previous two calendar years.

IUR is the ratio of the number of individuals collecting regular unemployment compensation (UC) to the number of individuals who could potentially collect UC if they lost their jobs.

Information on extended benefits will be posted on the department website when it is available, she said.

Oleksiak said the department's anti-fraud division is actively investigating fraud cases in which people are illegally filing for unemployment compensation using stolen identification.

The department's computer system was not breached, but the computer system of a vendor assisting in processing claims for federal compensation was hacked, he said.

He said about 58,000 claims, 15 percent of those filed the first week of the pandemic in March, were reviewed in the investigation, but the vast majority were found to be authentic and were paid.

Citing the ongoing investigation, he declined to say how many claims investigators are looking at or provide more information.

Dickinson said claims from people who have applied for benefits and received a personal identification number from the department, but still haven't received any money, are under review.

The likely reasons for the reviews stem from the responses people put on their applications, she said.