The new director of the Bay Area Workforce Development agrees with Governor Tony Evers' call for considerable investment in the state's unemployment system. The state dealt with a massive backlog of unemployment insurance claims during the last nine months of 2020 that was not resolved until late December. Matt Valiquette, who recently replaced the retiring Jim Golembeski, says the current system is extremely outdated. 

Valiquette adds that the current unemployment system's technology backbone is antiquated and needs to be replaced to prevent similar backlogs in the future.  According to statistics released last Wednesday from the U.S. Bureau of Labor, the Green Bay area showed an increased rate of nearly two percent of non-seasonally adjusted unemployment last month compared to December of 2019. December's pre-pandemic number in 2019 was 3.2 percent in 2019 and 5.1 percent in 2020.

(photo submitted)