The Employment Development Department, also known as the EDD, is a department administered by the Labor and Workforce Development Agency, which is in turn a part of the State of California’s Executive Branch.
The primary responsibility of the Employment Development Department is to administer unemployment vouchers. The other interaction between the EDD and unemployment is that the Employment Development Department administers Unemployment Insurance, a Job Services program, a disability insurance program, the workforce investment program, and a labor market information education program.
Given the interaction between the EDD and unemployment, and its activity in handling unemployment vouchers, it may be surprising that the Employment Development Department is also the largest tax collection agency in the state of California. The Employment Development Department also handles the collection and auditing of payroll taxes. The EDD also maintains employment records for more than 17 million workers in California.
In order to handle the volume of responsibilities that the Employment Development Department has beyond and in addition to unemployment vouchers, the EDD has nearly 10,000 employees, who provide services across more than 400 locations. A large part of the department’s nearly $12 billion are developed to handling unemployment vouchers.
Besides the role played between the EDD and unemployment, some of the other services it provides are:
· Assisting employers satisfy their labor needs,
· Helping job seekers find employment,
· Managing federal workforce investment programs,
· Administering Unemployment Insurance and Disability Insurance benefits,
· Developing self-sufficiency in recipients of welfare- to- work programs and the disabled,
· Collecting and dispersing employment-related taxes,
· Supporting state activities and benefits programs,
· and compiling labor market information.
