Elon Musk’s recent claims about widespread fraud in the unemployment benefits system have sparked a wave of headlines, but experts say his findings are far from new.
In a series of posts on X (formerly Twitter), Musk and his “Department of Government Efficiency” unveiled what they called an “initial survey” into fraudulent unemployment claims. The claims included examples of individuals who were deceased, as young as one year old, or even not born yet. Musk even highlighted a case where someone allegedly born in 2154 was listed as claiming $41,000.
The news quickly made its way through right-wing media outlets like Fox News and Breitbart. Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer also took up the claims, presenting them as recent revelations from “our partners at Doge” during a meeting with President Donald Trump.
“Your tax dollars were going to pay fraudulent unemployment claims for fake people born in the future!” Musk wrote on X. “There was no sanity check for impossibly young or impossibly old people for unemployment insurance.”
However, labor experts say Musk’s claims are simply a rehash of findings that were already well-known during the Biden administration. According to Andrew Stettner, who served as the director of unemployment insurance modernization at the U.S. Department of Labor under Biden, these fraud issues have been thoroughly investigated for years. He called Musk’s recent revelations “old news.”
“Going back in 2020 to say there was a lot of fraud—that’s the definition of old news,” Stettner said. “These were issues we were already aware of and actively addressing.”
Musk’s claims, experts argue, appear to be based on data accessed from the U.S. Department of Labor and its Office of Inspector General, without fully understanding the context. The Department of Labor has long been aware of these potential fraud risks and has already implemented measures to address them. Stettner explained that Musk and his team seem to be drawing conclusions without a full audit of the data.
“They got some access to data from the Department of Labor and Office of Inspector General, and are trying to make conclusions without doing a full audit or understanding the content,” he said.
Elizabeth Pancotti, managing director at the Groundwork Collaborative, also criticized Musk’s approach. She pointed out that the problem isn’t that fraud was overlooked, but rather that Musk, with his limited understanding, is now making a big deal out of issues already known and addressed by experts.
“What you have is the issue of an outside person who doesn’t know anything coming in and claiming that everything’s broken,” Pancotti said. “For the most part, he and his team are going to these federal agencies staffed by people who have been working on these programs for years. These programs work as intended.”
In fact, the Department of Labor’s Office of Inspector General identified potential fraud issues back in 2023, including claims filed by people over 100 or under 14. But many of these cases were not signs of fraud. They were due to identity protection measures used to safeguard victims of identity theft from being blocked from accessing benefits.
“The department has put in additional cross-checks through our department integrity data analysis to flag these claims,” Stettner explained. “This is a risk the department has already known about.”
The Biden administration also took proactive steps to tackle fraud, allocating $2 billion to help state unemployment systems improve fraud prevention. By 2023, the Department of Labor had already identified fraud involving claims from deceased people, federal prisoners, and those using suspicious emails, among others. These efforts led to more than 2,000 convictions and the recovery of $1.1 billion in improperly paid funds.
But even with these safeguards in place, the unemployment benefits system is not without flaws. Each year, thousands of workers are wrongfully denied benefits and must appeal, with 286,000 workers facing this challenge in 2024 alone.
Amy Traub, a senior researcher at the National Employment Law Project, called the renewed focus on fraud a distraction. “It’s really not new to anyone at this point that there were fraud issues with unemployment insurance during the pandemic,” Traub said. “I think that coming back to it now is a distraction, and it’s a distraction from the fact that unemployment insurance really is not ready for a recession.”
While the Department of Labor’s Office of Inspector General declined to comment on Musk’s claims, they pointed to available fraud data on their website, which was last updated under the Biden administration.
