By Daniella Silva - NBC News
Before it was suspended in March due to the coronavirus pandemic, Chantel Clark had been working for years as a visual merchant [in charge of distributing products in the interior space of a store] at a Macy's in Georgia.
Thus, she had flexible hours to care for her son, who has special needs.
When she was called back to work in May, she jumped at the opportunity.
But her eight-year-old son's special needs camp and school stopped offering face-to-face classes, and the family was left without "good child care options," laments Clark, 39.
Lacking the right to family leave, she
had to resign to care for her son
.
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She did not qualify for regular unemployment insurance because she quit her job.
But he believed he would be eligible for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA), a special unemployment compensation for people who normally do not qualify for such assistance, including parents who cannot work due to need. child care during the pandemic.
Under Georgia's system, you first had to apply for state unemployment insurance, which would be denied, before you could apply for the PUA, which also covers the self-employed.
He filed his application in August, but
both his initial and subsequent requests were denied
.
The claim was that he did not meet the criteria for benefits and is awaiting the results of an appeal.
"So far, I haven't received a penny from anyone," he
says.
Clark is far from the only one.
Months after the coronavirus began to hit the U.S. economy,
millions of unemployed people have yet to receive unemployment benefits
, according to an estimate by the nonpartisan think tank Century Foundation.
Others have suffered long delays.
In some cases, states are overwhelmed to deal with their huge application backlogs, according to Andrew Stettner, the foundation's principal investigator.
In others, systems to eradicate fraud are slowing down to offer this much-needed help.
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"It has been very difficult and very frustrating. Some people have waited weeks or even months for its benefits. It's a big problem,"
Stettner says.
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To make ends meet, Clark and her husband used the money they had been saving to buy a home.
They can no longer afford speech therapy or behavioral therapy for your child.
They sold their second car.
And Clark's husband works double shifts, doing extra work whenever he can, "just to keep the family afloat."
Clark's husband suffers from diabetes, and the family is "doing miracles every month just to pay for his prescription drugs, as they are so expensive," she says.
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"We try to endure from day to day and it is much more difficult when you do not have communication with anyone," he explains.
"It drains you mentally and emotionally, and makes you feel worthless, as if you are begging someone to give you something that you are entitled to receive," he
adds.
Unemployment claims remain well above pre-pandemic levels, when weekly claims hovered around 225,000.
Claims peaked at
7 million
in March, according to the Labor Department, before falling in the summer.
A man walks past a retail store that is closing due to the coronavirus pandemic in Winnetka, Illinois, Tuesday, June 23, 2020.AP Photo / Nam Y. Huh
The number of people filing unemployment claims for the first time has hovered around 1 million in recent months. The week ending January 23, 847,000 claims were filed, the department reported. Almost 16 million people receive some form of unemployment assistance.
State agencies claim they have hired new employees, brought retirees back, and worked seven days a week to try to keep up with the staggering number of claims, while also trying to fight fraud.
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Millions of people are still waiting for a confirmation or rejection of their applications
for benefits, according to Stettner, who cited the foundation's data.
The foundation also analyzed claim levels on December 26 and estimated how much would have been paid if benefits had not been interrupted by the delay in promulgation of the stimulus bill late last year.
The organization found that the program should have paid $ 11.5 billion a week in January.
Instead, actual payments reported by the Treasury Department for all unemployment beneficiaries amounted to $ 28.7 billion at the end of January, about $ 17.3 billion less than the $ 46.1 billion in benefits "that would have been paid if everyone had received the promised aid. on time".
Stettner says that because state systems have been so saturated, "anyone who had some kind of complication in their application was experiencing problems and serious delays in the process."
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That has been the case for Nicole, 34, an actress and teaching artist in California.
Nicole, who asked that her last name not be used for fear of future job retaliation, filed for state unemployment insurance after her workplace closed in March last year.
He applied for unemployment assistance and had no response for months.
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"All the waiting and all the calls you have to make takes time away from looking for work or improving your life," he laments.
A few months after Nicole applied, she was told by the California unemployment office that the problem was that she had made money in New York and New Jersey before moving to California in September 2019.
"Not only was the California unemployment office collapsed, but they had to call the New York unemployment office to confirm my income and they are also saturated so they call New Jersey to verify my income," he says.
“And I replied, 'I have all my tax forms.
I sent them by fax and by email, "he recalls.
"I do not understand this nonsense of verifying my income when I have federal documents that prove what I did," he says.
Nicole had to buy food stamps for the first time, accept donated food boxes, and borrow money from her parents
.
"If I didn't have that, I would have been homeless. I sure would have had to sleep on someone's couch," he says.
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You received your late benefits in August, five months after you applied, but because the state has yet to verify your income in New Jersey, the money you received was still below what you should have received.
The relief he felt was brief.
In September, Nicole's benefits ceased without explanation.
He called the state unemployment office again until assistance started again this month.
"It made me feel very small and helpless. I felt ashamed, and I still feel it," she
says.
As part of his proposed $ 1.9 billion aid package, President Joe Biden intends to include direct payments of $ 1,400 per person and a federal unemployment program of $ 400 per week.
The Biden Administration established through an executive order a system of coordination between federal agencies to help people determine what benefits they qualify for.
The White House cited the difficulty workers on unpaid or temporarily laid off leave have had in gaining access to benefits.
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Mary Proffitt, 64, first filed for unemployment benefits after she was fired from her job at a Kentucky restaurant in March.
Initially, the state system kept failing.
He was finally able to get through at the end of March and received help for a few weeks, but after having to get certified in May, he suddenly found himself in a call-back queue.
He waited 18 weeks before receiving late payments and being able to pay his bills
.
Mary Proffitt with her son Isaac.Courtesy of Mary Proffitt
"He had been living off what little savings he had, because you literally can't go 18 weeks without a penny,"
says Proffitt, whose teenage son has special needs and whose immunosuppressed father needs help.
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"The most stressful thing is having to juggle priorities and not having any income," he explains.
"Is it the electricity bill? I have to have cable, because we need WiFi for the school," he recalled.
When the money came,
his state unemployment benefits were just $ 131
.
"With $ 131 a week you don't get very far. Everything has to be prioritized," he said.
Her heating bill last month was $ 184, and
the shopping cart
costs
her about $ 100 a week
.
To supplement her income, she started making and selling embroidered masks for $ 20.
"We ate thanks to my mask business for a while," he says.
Now, you are back in a callback queue and haven't had any help since November.
"If I think about it in the depths of my soul, it is a miracle that I am not suicidal, and I have spoken with people who are unable to take it anymore," Proffitt added.
"I really feel that unemployed people are like the last people on the planet to be heard, and especially older people. Because we are stuck. I will never recover financially from this," he explained.
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But the hardest part was the holidays.
"I had to tell my son with special needs that the light and heat were Christmas," she says.
Even when people like Proffitt successfully collect unemployment, the amount received may be too low for many families to live alone.
Stettner says state unemployment benefits average $ 339 a week.
The PUA guarantees an average of 240 a week, it adds.
The Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, or CARES Act, the economic relief law for the coronavirus pandemic that Congress passed last year, gave those receiving unemployment benefits an additional $ 600 per week from April through end of July.
When the aid expired in late July, the Trump Administration implemented a short-term program called Lost Wage Assistance, a $ 300 supplement that lasted about five weeks.
Activists have pushed to continue those aid payments, both to help people make ends meet and to stimulate the economy.
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Stephanie Freed, co-director of ExtendPUA, a group that advocates for pandemic relief aid to focus on unemployment and workers, has been unemployed since March due to the pandemic.
Freed, a freelance electrician and lighting designer in the entertainment business in New York City, says that in a December survey of 1,300 unemployed and underemployed workers on the organization's website, 9.9% revealed that they had not yet received Benefits.
"Without a boost to unemployment, it is not going to be resolved," he said.
"People live in their cars.
A woman approached us, she lives in her car and now she can't go to job interviews because she can't pay for gas," she says.
"We have gotten into a desperation where millions of people, not hundreds, are being left behind," he says.
Rachel Deutsch, supervising employment justice attorney at the Center for People's Democracy, a progressive advocacy group, says that when people face potentially long periods of unemployment, "without regular state unemployment insurance with some additional income, they go to face extremely serious consequences. "
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Valerie Turos, 35, a sound engineer, worked at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and later for another theater in California before she was fired in the spring due to the pandemic.
Turos said he initially had no problems with his unemployment claim in Oregon because he had a pre-petition open.
Gwen and Valerie Turos Courtesy of Gwen Turos
Her ordeal began when her claim was exhausted and she was told by the Oregon Employment Department to apply in California, as she had worked there as well.
The verification process progressed slowly until finally you were told that part of the problem was that your W2 form was too fuzzy.
The claim has been pending since September.
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"I kept calling every week, and the attention I received from California could change a lot since there were many people who had just been hired. So, depending on who answered me, I received more or less help," he says.
Eventually, they told him that he would be in line to start a new claim again in Oregon, but because he had claimed another state through his California application, he had to do so over the phone.
"I've been trying to call the Oregon unemployment service for the past few weeks. This morning, my wife and I called 50 times each, and they are always busy. I don't know how you can get on the phone right now," he said.
"It's a really scary and exhausting process. Keep calling and being told to call back or you can't get through.
We all need a safety net when we go down and it doesn't exist," he
recalled.
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"People have now realized that no matter who you are or what you have accomplished in your professional life: you can be vulnerable to this kind of precariousness," he said.
"Yes, we need immediate relief. The December relief bill was not enough. But also, we must look at the kind of structural changes that are required so that no one has to go through this again," he concluded.