GAO's September 2023 report on pandemic unemployment insurance (GAO-23-106696) estimated that $100 billion to $135 billion of the benefits paid from April 2020 through May 2023 — between 11 and 15 percent of the total — went to fraudulent claims. A follow-on 2024 report (GAO-24-107471) found that self-attestation rules in the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program contributed to nearly $50 billion in improper payments.
What did the reports find?
The pandemic UI programs were built for speed, and that showed up in the error rates. States suspended waiting weeks and relaxed document checks, and the PUA program let applicants self-certify their earnings and eligibility. GAO found that fraud rates in the pandemic programs ran higher than in regular UI, with identity theft and multi-state filing among the main schemes. For scale: DOL reported roughly $8 billion in improper payments in UI in the year before the pandemic, a fraction of the pandemic-era totals.
Recovery and prosecution have been slower than the fraud itself. The Labor Department's inspector general has reported more than 2,300 individuals charged and over 1,800 convictions in pandemic UI fraud cases, with about $2.2 billion in recovery-related outcomes, and has warned that statutes of limitations for many pandemic cases began expiring in 2025, pressing prosecutors and states to move faster.
Related stories: Auditors keep finding the same roots of Social Security overpayments · The pandemic relief ledger, as the oversight bodies close their books.
What happens next?
GAO's recommendations — stronger identity verification, better data sharing across states and federal agencies, and fraud recovery tools — have been folded into law and into Labor Department guidance for state agencies. States now participate in cross-state claimant data checks and use identity verification services that did not exist before 2020. The DOL inspector general continues to audit state UI systems and to press for recovering pandemic-era debts before the legal deadlines close.
What it means for you
The audits changed the claims process for anyone filing for unemployment today: expect identity verification steps, questions designed to catch multi-state filing, and longer processing when your record needs extra checks. If you were a victim of UI identity theft, the same reports drove the procedures states use to clear fraudulent claims filed in your name and to protect your tax refund from wrongful collections. And if you received pandemic benefits you did not qualify for, the statute-of-limitations warnings explain why collection notices may still arrive.
The DOL inspector general's recommendations have focused on the practical chokepoints: verifying identity at intake, comparing claims across states to catch duplicate filings, and giving states the tools and deadlines to pursue overpayments. GAO has separately pressed the Labor Department and Congress to preserve the data sharing arrangements built during the pandemic, arguing that dismantling them would return the program to the conditions that allowed the fraud in the first place.