In the last three years unemployed citizens in Wisconsin received nearly $500 million they were not entitled to receive, according to a statement released Wednesday from the Office of the Vice President of the United States.

These findings are a part of a Department of Labor report outlining the amount of unemployment insurance each state has improperly given out over the past three years.

Wisconsin gave $497,137,531 in unemployment insurance it was not entitled to give, according to the report.

Forty-four percent of Wisconsin’s waste was attributed to the state’s failure to confirm that those receiving benefits had met the state’s requirement that recipients be actively searching for employment, the report said. Unemployment payments given to Wisconsinites who had already returned to work was responsible for nearly a third of the waste.

While Wisconsin’s 12.4 percent rate seems high, it is still lower than several states, including Indiana, whose 43.56 percent of improper payments over the last three years resulted in $1.73 billion paid by the state, the statement said.

The findings were included in a joint cabinet meeting called by Vice President Joe Biden to address the wasteful spending occurring in federal agencies as part of President Barack Obama’s Campaign to Cut Waste. In addition to creating an initiative to reduce improper unemployment insurance payments, the campaign includes a program to reduce unnecessary waste in Medicaid and Medicare, the statement said, which is estimated to save $2 billion.

“Today’s announcements on cutting waste in Medicare, Medicaid and unemployment insurance shows that we can make our government more efficient and responsible to the American people,” Biden said in Wednesday’s statement. “If we’re going to spur jobs and economic growth and restore long-term fiscal solvency, we need to make sure hard-earned tax dollars don’t go to waste.”

State Rep. Glenn Grothman, R-West Bend, said the management of unemployment insurance is the responsibility of primarily state governments. Because the state receives federal funding for unemployment insurance, he said the state must abide by parameters set by the federal government.

Grothman said any short-term changes made in the distribution of unemployment insurance would likely come from a joint labor committee.

At the cabinet meeting, the Department of Labor revealed several initiatives to cut some of the unnecessary unemployment insurance spending happening at the state level, the statement said.

The DOL released each state’s financial irregularities from unemployment insurance through an online map including how much each state has unnecessarily spent in their respective programs.

The DOL also identified the types of problems driving the state’s spending errors, as well as the steps each state has taken to correct the issue.

Six states – Virginia, Indiana, Colorado, Washington, Louisiana, and Arizona – were identified as “high priority states” due to their extensively high improper payment percentages, the statement said.

“DOL is working with these states to ensure they develop a comprehensive turnaround plan to reduce their improper payments,” the statement said.

On Thursday, the DOL granted $192 million to 42 states in order to create waste-cutting initiatives and retool their unemployment insurance programs, the statement said. Part of the DOL money will allow these states to implement technological upgrades in order to create more accurate data collections and make processing claims for unemployment easier.