States Urgently Need People Who Know a Half Century-Old Computer Language to Process Unemployment Claims

Job seekers look over job opening fliers at the WorkSource exhibit, a collaborative effort by governmental agencies to offer jobs and job training resources at the Greater Los Angeles Career Expo at the Pasadena Convention Center in Pasadena, Calif., on May 14, 2009. David McNew/Getty Images

On top of ventilators, face masks and health care workers, you can now add COBOL programmers to the list of what several states urgently need as they battle the coronavirus pandemic.

In New Jersey, Gov. Phil Murphy has put out a call for volunteers who know how to code the decades-old computer programming language called COBOL because many of the state’s systems still run on older mainframes.