People who lost their jobs wait in line to apply for unemployment benefits, after an outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19), at the Arkansas Workforce Center in Fort Smith, Arkansas, USA. , April 6, 2020.
Nick Oxford | Stock Photo | REUTERS
In mid-March, Erin Madden was fired from her job as a waitress at the Hollywood Burbank airport. Around the same time, she applied for unemployment in California.
More than 120 days later, you still haven’t received a payment.
“It’s incredibly stressful,” said Madden, 28. “It’s been four months of this and I have no idea when it’s going to end.”
The $ 600 weekly federal unemployment checks that millions of Americans are receiving amid the coronavirus pandemic are likely to end this month. Now Republicans and Democrats are fighting over what to replace with those payments.
But some people still await the first round of unemployment benefits after state offices across the country were inundated by a gigantic wave of claims. More than 30 million Americans are collecting unemployment benefits, which is approximately five times the peak of the Great Recession.
In Texas, for example, more than 148,000 people who have been eligible for unemployment are still waiting for their payments, according to the Texas Workforce Commission. About 55,000 people are in the same situation in Florida.
“The unemployment insurance system has never had as many claims as it has since March,” said Stephen Wandner, a senior fellow at the National Academy of Social Security. “The staff is inadequate and the computer systems are old. Hiring and training new staff is a slow process.”
Erin Madden: “It’s been four months of this and I have no idea when it’s going to end.”
Source: Erin Madden
In April, Madden heard from the California unemployment office. You were asked to provide additional documentation to confirm your identity. The next day, she said, she mailed a copy of her passport and W-2.
She has called the office every week since then, she said. “Sometimes I don’t make it to ring number 250,” she said. When she finally reached someone, she said, “They told me they had a lot of IDs to verify.”
People whose unemployment claims are flagged for one reason or another may end up waiting much longer for a decision about their benefits amid the pandemic. Among the contested claims, 84% received a decision within 21 days of February, according to the US Department of Labor By June, only 39% were responding within that deadline.
“Fraud prevention measures that trap truly eligible people are difficult to eliminate,” said Andrew Stettner, a member of the Century Foundation and a leading expert on unemployment.
Finally, Madden said that someone at the unemployment office told him that his identity had been verified and that he should receive his payments within 30 days. But that was in early June.
Every time Madden called again, he said, he said the same thing: “They say, ‘You should get it anytime.'”
They say, “You should receive it at any time.”
A spokesman for the California Employment Development Department said that due to confidentiality rules they cannot discuss individual cases. The department has processed 8.7 million claims in less than five months, which is more than in the highest year of the Great Recession, he said.
“The EDD is in the midst of an accelerated mass hiring effort to add 5,300 employees, while improving technology systems to gain efficiency and developing more communication methods to get claimants the information they need about this insurance based on week-by-week program eligibility, “he said.
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Even though the $ 600 unemployment checks are scheduled to end this month, claimants will be owed retroactive payments for the weeks they qualified for but did not receive, Wandner said. That means they will eventually get thousands of dollars. (Although the amount will be less after taxes).
“Applicants should receive checks, automatic deposits, debit cards for the full amount owed, eventually,” Wandner said.
Still, the wait has left Madden in a precarious situation.
Before the pandemic occurred, he was close to paying off his credit card debt.
You have now received an additional $ 3,000 to cover your bills, including groceries and your health care premiums. She hasn’t been able to pay her rent in three months.
Your bank account balance fell as low as $ 155.
“There will be lasting damage to my credit and my mental health,” he said.
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