If someone told you that there was over $32 billion dollars in unemployment fraud already in 2022, you would likely believe it. For most of you reading this, you probably guessed that the number was much higher. Well, the year isn't over yet; if you have $50 billion in the pool, you might come out a winner! That's just the scary reality of the unemployment program in America; it seems as if anyone can defraud it, and they're never caught until it's too late. According to former Senator Ted Gaines, this is a massive problem. Gaines was elected in California to represent the First District's Board of Equalization, and he represents over 10 million constituents. What he has found is that unemployment fraud is exponentially higher than initially reported. The initial reports suggested that there was $20 billion in fraud, which itself is an insanely high number; but what Gaines found is that the fraud is much higher than that.

Oh, and by the way, this isn't even a number for America at large. Are you sitting down? This is only for California. That's right; one state out of 50 in America, and they have over $32 billion in unemployment fraud. That's a staggering number that is hard to wrap one's head around. For the entire nation, the likely numbers are in the hundreds of billions, but it's so high that it's nearly impossible to track accurately.

In California alone, they dealt with over 35,000 claims from people who were prisoners. They dealt with people who didn't live anywhere near the state. But because California was just handing out CARES Act money from the federal government, there was no oversight and so the state was just handing out money to everyone who applied. This includes hundreds of people who were literally on death row, awaiting execution.

More Claims Denied Than Ever Before

California isn't the only state to deal with such massive fraud, which is why most US states are very careful about handing anyone benefits now. People who truly need them are having trouble getting them because there has been so much fraud, and America's politicians don't want to look any dumber than they already do.

The Two Main Reasons for Claim Denials

It's hard not to be cynical of the government if you live in America. Though to be perfectly honest, it used to be a citizen's duty to be cynical, once upon a time, and the mainstream news media was supposed to help you maintain a cynical, skeptical view of those elected to lead the nation. That's what the entire Watergate scandal was about. Some decades and about three dozen much worse scandals later, and the corporate media is set up more like a wrestling organization than a news source. The point here is that you probably will not hear from the corporate media in America that the United States' federal government has been cracking down on individual states and demanding that they stop accepting so many people for unemployment benefits. Why would this be the case? Once Joe Biden took office, his administration changed the standards of what "unemployment" means. Now, if you do not draw a benefits check from your state, you're not counted as unemployed. And that means Biden's numbers stay artificially low and make the economy look strong.

Yes, that's a very cynical view of the government and the media, but that does not make it any less true. These are facts that can be easily found with a quick search. Though the second reason that there are so many claim denials for unemployment benefits is that the sheer amount of fraud has made many of these government offices skeptical. You might not have a payroll job, but many of these agencies might still assume you're employed under the table, and thus they will deny you. Many are finding loopholes to knock people off the roles very early. It's harder to get unemployment now than ever, and the government doesn't care because they benefit from average people not getting paid. They keep more money, and the numbers look better for politicians.

Fraud is running rampant through the unemployment genre, and no one really knows any way to stop it. If it keeps growing, state governments are going to eventually stop handing out benefits altogether to normal people, which will force people to jump through so many hoops for a few dollars that most will find it's not even worth it. Something has to give.