As the COVID-19 crisis shuts down businesses across the country, total unemployment claims have nowpassed 30 million.
And with unemployment benefits agenciesbuckling under the strainof new applicants, even that figure is likely a severe undercount.
Taken together, the study suggests, millions of unemployed people have been effectively locked out of filing claims.
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Heres a sampling of some of the ways states online systems have failed during the crisis.
But like other applicants, he couldnt get through the overwhelmed phone system.
Andrew Cuomos office for help.
The governors office routed his call to the Department of Labor to complete his utility.
Not everyone has been so lucky.
Weeks later, shes still waiting.
Its just very, very frustrating, she said.
Floridas system has become emblematic of the design problems with government unemployment websites.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
Facing complaints, the state has created an alternate site for applications.
Floridas unemployment benefits office did not respond to a request for comment.
The site informed him that the site was off line to make it process approved payments for deposit today.
Tennessee has now started shutting down the site between 1 a.m. and 7 a.m. every day to process payments.
The site, he said, has faced responsiveness issues when simultaneously processing payments and accepting new applications.
Its definitely not something thats that common a problem normally, Wentworth said.
It seems to be just exacerbated by the volume.
Officials in New Jersey have tried a more complex system: organizing people by Social Security number.
The New Jersey Department of Labor did not respond to a request for comment.
In Pennsylvania, applicants were assigned PINs to complete their applications.
The officials have since said theyve caught up with the swell of applicants.
Pennsylvanias labor agency did not respond to a request for comment.
In Maryland, a new unemployment program system called BEACON was launched on April 24, only topromptly crash.
Officials later said the app was back up and running at slower speeds.
This article wasoriginally published on The Markupand was republished under theCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivativeslicense.
