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.
Scorching Saturdays: The rising heat threat inside football stadiums
Excessive heat and more frequent medical incidents in Southern college football stadiums could be a warning sign for universities across the country.
The Gulf States Newsroom is hiring an Audio Editor
The Gulf States Newsroom is hiring an Audio Editor to join our award-winning team covering important regional stories across Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana.
Judge orders new Alabama Senate map after ruling found racial gerrymandering
U.S. District Judge Anna Manasco, appointed by President Donald Trump during his first term, issued the ruling Monday putting a new court-selected map in place for the 2026 and 2030 elections.
Construction on Meta’s largest data center brings 600% crash spike, chaos to rural Louisiana
An investigation from the Gulf States Newsroom found that trucks contracted to work at the Meta facility are causing delays and dangerous roads in Holly Ridge.
Bessemer City Council approves rezoning for a massive data center, dividing a community
After the Bessemer City Council voted 5-2 to rezone nearly 700 acres of agricultural land for the “hyperscale” server farm, a dissenting council member said city officials who signed non-disclosure agreements weren’t being transparent with citizens.
Alabama Public Television meeting draws protesters in Birmingham over discussion of disaffiliating from PBS
Some members of the Alabama Educational Television Commission, which oversees APT, said disaffiliation is needed because the network has to cut costs after the Trump administration eliminated all funding for public media this summer.
