BATON ROUGE - A recent analysis of the Louisiana Workforce Commission (LWC) by the Louisiana Legislative Auditor's Office revealed that the LWC inadvertently issued approximately $1.08 in payments to deceased individuals.

Auditors say the money went to a total of 374 deceased individuals.

The amount reportedly represents 0.013 percent of the approximately $8.57 billion in unemployment benefits paid out by LWC between March 2020 and April 2021.

Analysts say of the $1.08 million in payments, $629,091 could not have been prevented, but $337,007 should have been prevented by LWC’s current controls.

Additionally, the report concludes that $123,194 could have been prevented if LWC conducted a weekly match with the Louisiana Department of Health’s death data instead of a monthly match.

Officials say although LWC could not prevent all of the payments from being made, the organization can attempt to recover all of the potentially improper payments.

Click here to view the full audit report.