RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — More than two months after the coronavirus pandemic started forcing Virginia businesses to slash their workforces, the state’s unemployment system still can’t keep up with the unprecedented deluge of calls and emails from laid-off workers who need help.
Virginians across the state continue to report that it’s nearly impossible to reach anyone with the Virginia Employment Commission by phone and have instead turned to social media, legal aid centers or their elected officials for help troubleshooting the complicated process.
The Virginia Employment Commission’s five-person customer service team is getting as many as 20,000 emails a day, said spokeswoman Joyce Fogg, who acknowledged problems with the phone line and whose own phone rings off the hook all day long.
“Everybody’s getting all kinds of requests right now,” she said. “I just hope it’s going to level out.”
Virginia’s antiquated unemployment filing system — which Fogg said was put in place in 1985 — has strained under the demand for assistance unleashed by the pandemic. And Megan Healy, Gov. Ralph Northam’s chief workforce advisor, has said the agency had to work quickly to staff up – in February it had about half the number of workers it did during the Great Recession.
Nearly 678,000 unemployment claims were filed between mid-March and May 8, according to a presentation Virginia Employment Commissioner Ellen Marie Hess gave to a Senate committee Tuesday. Of those, about two-thirds have been paid, according to her presentation, which said that over $2 billion in benefits have gone out since March 15.
The VEC could not provide a breakdown of the status of the remaining one-third of claims that remained unpaid. But Fogg said many were ineligible or awaiting an appeal or validation of some part of their application.
Fogg said there are also lots of people “scamming and working the system,” noting a recent email she received from someone who said she hadn’t worked in years but wondered if she could get the supplemental $600 federal payment.
The department recently acknowledged overpaying about 35,000 people, while others have reported a weekslong wait before receiving benefits.
Robert Hyde, who was laid off in mid-March from his job as a breakfast cook at a Virginia Beach hotel, said he filed for unemployment the very next day with help from his human resources department.
