Unemployment site will be down for 3 days

Florida trying to speed up payments

Florida’s unemployment website will be down for three days as of Friday, the longest shutdown of the system so far as the state tries to catch up with payments for jobless Floridians.

The state Department of

Economic Opportunity, which manages the program, said the shutdown is necessary to “process payments faster” on Florida’s CONNECT system.

“We know that not being able to access the system may cause uncertainty, but these updates are designed to expedite the process for payment,” DEO said in a statement.

The system will be back online at 8 a.m. Monday.

A week ago, Gov. Ron DeSantis switched up leadership of the program, handing it to state Florida Department of Management Services Secretary Jonathan Satter and tasking him with doing “whatever it takes” to speed up the process of making payments.

On Monday, only 6% of Floridians had been paid unemployment, even though some have been applying due to coronavirusrelated job losses since March 15. But Thursday, that figure was up to almost 22%, the clearest indication yet that Florida was finally making headway in getting money out to about 700,000 Floridians who have submitted unique claims.

The state has been overwhelmed by the sudden

and dramatic spike in unemployment claims, managing them on a system with a history of issues that buckled under the stress. The result: Florida lagged behind most states in making payments to workers who needed them to pay their rent or feed their children.

So far, DeSantis has waived a number of requirements typically part of the application.

Claimants are no longer required to submit a report every two weeks updating their job search and ability to work status in order to keep getting payments. There is also no longer a one-week waiting period before beginning to receive assistance.

New applicants should apply under an updated website DEO set up at FloridaJobs.org/RAApplication.

But challenges still linger. For example, one of the biggest complaints many claimants who filed in midMarch have is that they are stuck in what workers are calling a “black hole:” Their applications are in limbo while some who applied in April are already getting paid.

In an interview with NBC2, Satter said there was no black hole — “we are getting to them.”

When asked about the issue, DEO said in a statement that there are a number of reasons someone’s application may not have been processed yet. If someone is applying for unemployment for the first time, their identity has to be verified, meaning it’s possible that those who have applied before and have already been verified are being processed faster even if they applied later.

Payments may also be delayed if an applicant provided incomplete information that triggers an eligibility flag that then needs to be resolved before payment.

Because of all the delays for applicants to get into the system, Satter said the state will be offering retroactive pay to the date workers lost employment as far back as March 9.