Can Community Navigators Increase Access to Unemployment Insurance?

The Role of Help in Overcoming Administrative Burdens

As with many U.S. social programs, unemployment insurance (UI) benefits do not reach all eligible individuals due in part to administrative burdens – such as worker confusion about eligibility and complicated application rules. In recent years, states have experimented with new navigator programs to improve access to UI benefits. In these programs, states partner with community-based organizations, including worker organizations, to help unemployed workers access UI benefits and job training services. 

We recently studied one navigator program in Maine, drawing from surveys of workers and interviews with navigator counselors and state UI agency staff. Our results show how well-designed navigator partnerships can increase access to social benefits among underserved communities by reducing administrative burdens. They also demonstrate how navigator partnerships could lay the foundation for future organizing by workers to build longer-run economic and political power. At the same time, however, our results make clear the limits of navigators working within social programs with onerous application rules and underfunded administration. 

Administrative burdens in the UI system limit the reach of benefits

In the years before the COVID-19 pandemic, fewer than one in five eligible jobless workers actually received benefits. While access to UI benefits has been a challenge for all workers, workers of color, workers with less formal education, lower-paid workers, younger workers, and workers with disabilities, have all been less likely to apply for, and receive, benefits, even when potentially eligible. 

The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting recession further highlighted the long-standing problems that unemployed workers have faced accessing unemployment benefits. Despite historic expansions of benefits, many workers, especially workers from underserved communities, faced long delays and other barriers to claiming benefits during the pandemic.

One important reason for these disparities is worker misperceptions about UI program rules. These rules are often complex, varying across states and worker circumstances, which leads to widespread confusion about eligibility. Forms can also be confusing or not translated into a language the claimant is proficient in. The result: Many workers who may be eligible for unemployment benefits do not apply, and many who do receive benefits experience lost time, stress, and financial pressure from delayed or erroneously denied benefits.

States and the federal government pilot UI navigators

Research on the UI system has suggested one important way to address disparities in access to UI benefits: information alongside assistance from trusted, community-based organizations that can work closely with unemployed workers, especially worker-led organizations such as unions. Past research has shown that unionized workers are more likely to apply for, and receive, UI benefits than are other workers, in large part due to their more accurate assessments of their eligibility. What is more, gaps in applying for and receiving UI benefits by race and education are smaller—and sometimes disappear—among unionized workers. 

All figures from Center for American Progress

Motivated by these findings, several states have experimented with UI navigator programs, which fund community-based organizations, especially worker organizations, with trusted relationships in underserved communities, to help more workers apply for, and if eligible receive, UI benefits. The Biden-Harris Administration, as part of its efforts to increase equitable access to UI benefits through the American Rescue Plan Act, launched a grant program to further encourage such experimentation with navigators. 

Maine was one of the first states to stand up such a program, launching the Peer Workforce Navigator program in 2022 as a two-year pilot. Maine navigator organizations support workers through in-person meetings, emails, phone calls, and text messages. They also leverage their connections with different communities to spread the word about their services. Importantly, the Maine navigators work alongside state UI and employment agency staff, complementing agency staff work.

Our study of the Maine navigator program

In the spring and summer of this year, we launched a series of surveys and interviews to understand how the Maine navigator program was working. We first surveyed workers with recent unemployment experience in Northeastern states, and then fielded a parallel survey of Maine navigator clients. By comparing these workers’ experiences, we sought to understand what effect, if any, the navigators had on the experiences of assisted workers. We also interviewed workers who had received assistance from the navigators, navigator counselors, and Maine UI agency staff. (You can read the full report describing our methods, findings, and conclusions here.)

Our findings suggest that the Maine navigators had an important effect on the clients they served. Compared to otherwise similar workers, workers receiving navigator assistance were more likely to apply for UI benefits, receive UI benefits, and receive UI benefits faster (within three weeks). 

We also found evidence that navigator-assisted workers reported lower levels of stress and difficulty in their application to UI benefits, important measures of psychological burden. These are important outcomes–especially since the navigators were often serving workers who faced multiple and compounding disadvantages, such as limited English language proficiency, disabilities, or poverty.

But we found important limits to the navigators as well. Compared with the general unemployed population, navigator clients tended to be more likely to say they had experienced material hardship while waiting for UI benefits to arrive—despite receiving their benefits faster than other workers. Moreover, PWN clients were less likely to report feeling that they were respected in the UI application process—notably, not necessarily due to the PWN program but rather due to the whole experience. 

Navigators, community-based organizing, and the U.S. welfare state

Our results show both the possibilities and limits of navigator partnerships to expand access to the U.S. welfare state, reduce administrative burdens, and empower beneficiary communities. Consistent with other recent scholarship (such as studying housing vouchers), we find that community-based navigators can help individuals better understand how to navigate social programs, in the process reducing administrative burdens and improving benefit take-up. Navigators in Maine could reach communities and play roles that state program staff could not–doing things like on-the-spot translations, understanding relevant cultural norms, and addressing communities’ lack of trust in government. 

We also find that the conversations with Maine community navigators – especially since they involve worker organizations – may have also increased clients’ interest in labor collective action, which could help workers build their own economic and political power over the longer run. 

At the same time, the Maine navigator program faced consequential limits. Funding was limited given the pilot nature of the program, restricting the ability of navigators to plan for the longer run. Additionally, there was only so much navigators could do to assist clients dealing with a complicated social program like UI that has faced decades of underfunding of program administration. As we documented, navigator clients faced compounding disadvantages that made the UI system challenging. 

The lesson we take away from this experience in Maine is that navigators have a vital role to play in making social programs like UI work better, especially for underserved communities. When working well, as in the example we describe here, navigators may also be able to support not just access to social benefits, but also broader organizing efforts by beneficiaries to build power. Yet it is important to be clear about the limits of navigator programs: they are not substitutes for broader system reforms–reforms that should include changes to eligibility rules, application procedures, and adequate funding and staffing for program administration. In addition, navigator programs should be designed with sufficient funding and support to ensure that they can work well for the long run as well as clearly defined duties to ensure that they complement the role of public unemployment agencies. We hope our findings help more policymakers–across localities, states, and the federal government–consider pilots with similar navigator programs in other social programs.

---

Michele Evermore is a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, former deputy director for policy in the Office of Unemployment Insurance Modernization at the U.S. Department of Labor.

Alex Hertel-Fernandez is an associate professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University and a visiting fellow with the Washington Center for Equitable Growth.

David Madland is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and the author of Re-Union: How Bold Labor Reforms Can Repair, Revitalize, and Reunite the United States (Cornell University Press, 2021).