OESC Says 90 Percent Of Applicants Ineligible For Return To Work Incentive

Hundreds of Oklahomans got a financial boost Thursday as the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission began sending out its first round of 'Back to Work' payments.

The $1,200 payment is meant to get people off unemployment and into a job.

Out of the huge number of applicants to the program, only a fraction were approved.

The chance to get a check worth more than $1,000 from the state is enticing and more than 10,000 Oklahomans like Marni Shaw decided to apply for it.

“This morning I woke up and it was on my card," Shaw said.

Shaw's one of the lucky ones - only 500 applications were actually approved.

Oklahoma Employment Security Commission Director Shelley Zumwalt said the vast majority just didn't meet the main requirement to have received unemployment benefits one of the first two weeks in May.

"Over 90% of the people who applied out of that 10,000 did not have that one requirement," Zumwalt said.

She said the payments are meant to help get business back to normal faster.

“I hear from employers every single day that need to hire more people so that they can fully reopen to pre-pandemic hours or pre-pandemic opening seven days a week. So, we want to incentivize people to go out and find those jobs," Zumwalt said.

She hopes it'll speed up the state's recovery and help applicants like Shaw in the process.

“I don’t get to spend very much of it for myself, I pay bills with it. It’ll get me a little bit ahead next month," Shaw said.

Thursday's $1,200 payments are only the first round. Zumwalt expects the number to grow after the state opted out of additional federal unemployment benefits, which she thinks will lead more people to get back to work.

“That’s something that’s so important to us as a state, as an economy, to you know really building back to where we were pre-pandemic,” Zumwalt said.

Oklahomans can still apply for the Back to Work Initiative. The deadline is September 4.