Florida Unemployment Claims Rise Alongside Coronavirus Cases
FORT LAUDERDALE — As the COVID-19 pandemic sweeps the nation, the number of cases is rising along with unemployment. The situation is only intensifying with time as more people are filing unemployment claims and not receiving their money due to a longstanding fragmented system. Florida residents are still waiting nearly a month after filing claims while officials scramble with solutions, but for many struggling, the money is already too late.
According to Local 10, unemployment reached a record high of 14.5% in the month of May, compared to February’s rate of 2.8%. The economic shutdown in tourism, retail and other industries has left the state spiraling, bringing on numbers not seen since the Great Depression era. The Sun Sentinel says over one million jobs have been lost.
Because of this, many people are turning to the state’s unemployment system for help but are encountering more drawbacks than benefits. Gabriella Savignon, a Boca Raton resident who filed for unemployment after she stopped working at Raw Juce, is concerned with the problematic system.
“It was hard to find exactly where to go because when I searched up ‘file for unemployment’ it took me to a website that wasn’t just the link to sign up and there weren’t clear directions on exactly how to do it,” said Savignon. “And when I got to the section to put in my social security number there was a pop-up that said a claim with my number had already been filed and that kind of scared me just because I thought my identity was stolen.”
These issues, however, are not new. Back in March, just before President Trump signed the CARES Act into law, record numbers of jobless claims hit Florida’s unemployment CONNECT website, and it crashed. In an April 6 press briefing, Gov. Ron DeSantis said that there was a redundancy so that if something like this happened, the backup could take hold and people could use it, but that server was never actually connected to the system.
The faults reportedly date back even further to the systems inception under previous governor turned current Sen. Rick Scott. In addition to a glitchy system, the eligibility criteria (which includes the application and maintenance process) made it almost impossible to access and hold on to unemployment benefits. As a result, it has been accused of being “designed to fail” in an effort to keep state unemployment numbers low.
Auditors warned officials of these issues and more, but they were never fixed and now a price is being paid. Florida Atlantic University Economist Dr. Ken Johnson says it is important to find a solution to distribute the stimulus bill funds because it is key to keep businesses open and employees working in order to maintain the economy.
“It is critical that we get funding and support to small businesses and the employees of those small businesses to keep them open,” says Dr. Johnson. “Once you shutter a business, it is way more costly to reopen that business. We see that today with businesses that are trying to remain open with skeleton staff, because they know this is important.”
The $2.2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act was signed into law on March 27. Its purpose is not only to provide safeguard money to laid off workers but also to relieve small and susceptible businesses. The benefits include an extra $600 a week for four months in addition to the $275 weekly state standard made to jobless workers and it also extends the minimum unemployment pay period by 13 weeks.
Despite the deals importance and the dependence upon it, the delay of distributed funds is a combination of the state being unprepared to accept the aid from the bill, and the inability of the unemployment system to communicate with the heavy volume of new applicants. In an effort to fix this, the state claims they are making strides in repairs including a surge of call center workers and CONNECT system hardware enhancements, both which will allow for the increase of Floridians to be served simultaneously. According to the Sun Sentinel, Miami Republican Sen. Jose Javier Rodriguez shared that he is concerned that there is no predicted timeline on the improvement plan because people, like Savignon, are still waiting for their money.
“I haven’t heard back anything,” says Savignon. “I haven’t gotten a letter or an email about any money that I’m supposed to get.”
Even if the plan is implemented well and money is ultimately allotted, the problem at hand is that people who have been out of a job for weeks and are struggling have had bills to pay and mouths to feed.
Sumitra Joseph is a 21-year-old student and medical scribe at Memorial Regional Hospital who classified as a non-essential employee in April and subsequently filed for unemployment in May. With no other work available, she says she is fortunate to have provisions from her parents as she is quarantining at home, but she has had to make budget adjustments as her source of income was cut off.
“My life is very different in the sense that I no longer have money coming in to support my spending habits,” says Joseph. “I am grateful that I can rely on food from my parents, but besides that, I am financially independent, and it is only a matter of time before I run out of savings while I wait for my check to come in. At this point it is a challenge to even put money towards things I would consider priority.”
Dr. Johnson says that while no one can necessarily be prepared for the unprecedented and uncontrollable circumstance that is Coronavirus, the government needs to adapt to fix the issues at hand sooner rather than later, even with the economy trending upward in the midst of Florida’s reopening.
“COVID-19 is an exogenous shock to our economy, it has economic consequences,” says Dr. Johnson. “It’s come out of the blue, we’ve never been here before and we don’t really know how to respond. Therefore, it is important that we take quick and decisive actions. However, if those actions prove not to be working, we have to be willing to disinvest our personal interest, our political interest, and adjust what we’re doing to respond to the needs of the marketplace.”
