Alabama Labor Department Discontinues In-Person Unemployment Assistance
A new phone appointment system debuts Jan. 4 for residents in need of unemployment assistance. The Alabama Department of Labor announced Wednesday it will no longer offer in-person appointments due to concerns around COVID-19.
Beginning Jan. 3, those wishing to file claims can call 1-800-361-4524 after 5 p.m. until midnight Sundays through Thursdays to schedule a call back for the next day. The state employment agency will schedule 600 callbacks per day, with the exception of holidays and weekends.
The department encourages people who are unable to schedule an appointment one day to call back the next day after 5 p.m.
“This new callback system will allow us to serve more claimants per day than we’ve been able to previously,” Alabama Department of Labor Secretary Fitzgerald Washington said. “We’ve been working nonstop to improve our services to unemployed Alabamians and this system will hopefully accomplish that.”
One callback appointment will be allowed per day. Those callbacks will come from a Montgomery phone number and will be scheduled from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
“Claimants should keep their phones near them the entire day of their scheduled callback,” a labor department news release said.
For weeks this past summer, long unemployment lines in Montgomery prompted officials to offer assistance by appointment only. The agency was flooded with requests and had been working through a backlog since the early months of the pandemic.
The final days for in-person service at the Crump Senior Center in Montgomery will be Dec. 28 and 29. The labor department said appointments for those days will be available on the agency’s website beginning Friday, December 25 at 5 p.m.
Alabama had 7,543 initial unemployment claims filed last week, a slight drop from the previous week. The most sought-after employees in November, according to the labor department, were retail salespeople, registered nurses, sales representatives, customer service representatives, and food service workers.
UAB Health System, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and Lowe’s took the largest share of job postings last month.
FTC accuses AI search engine of ‘rampant consumer deception’
Federal officials say a company that operates hundreds of landing pages for AI answers is running an operation that has duped thousands of users, who were unable to stop costly monthly charges.
‘My role was making movies that mattered,’ says Jodie Foster, as ‘Taxi Driver’ turns 50
Foster was just 12 years old when she starred in the 1976 film. "What luck to have been part of that, our golden age of cinema in the '70s," she says. Her latest film is Vie Privée (A Private Life).
Supreme Court appears likely to uphold state bans on transgender athletes
To date, 27 states have enacted laws barring transgender participation in sports.
Keep an eye out for these new books from big names in January
The new year begins with a host of promising titles from George Saunders, Julian Barnes, Jennette McCurdy, Karl Ove Knausgaard and more. Here's a look ahead at what's publishing this month.
Want to play a Tiny Desk concert? The 2026 Contest is now open for entries
The 2026 Tiny Desk Contest, our annual search for the next great undiscovered artist, is now officially open for entries.
Scott Adams, the controversial cartoonist behind ‘Dilbert,’ dies at 68
Adams announced in May that he was dying of metastatic prostate cancer. Thousands of newspapers carried his strip satirizing office culture from the '90s until a controversy in 2023.
