NM ran up $97.8 million in unemployment overpayments in 2009; third-highest rate in the US and sixth-highest in fraud

The crummy economy has sent a lot of New Mexicans to the unemployment office in the past year but after analyzing the numbers from the US Department of Labor, some state residents are getting more benefits than they should — a lot more. Last month, the Labor Department released national figures estimating that the country overpaid by $7.1 billion in unemployment benefits for the calendar year 2009. That caused me to wonder how New Mexico fared in relation to other states. The Labor Department needed a couple weeks to complete its state-by-state breakdown and now the numbers have been released. The results? New Mexico ranks third in the country in the percentage of unemployment overpayments, with some 28.68 percent ($97.8 million) of the total benefits sent to New Mexico unemployment recipients should not have been delivered. Only Louisiana and Indiana had a worse percentage. And New Mexico sixth in the nation in the rate of fraud for unemployment payments, with $16.8 — or 4.93 percent — stripped from the state unemployment insurance fund in 2009. Why are the numbers so bad?...more