“What do I do? That’s my question”

With more than 550,000 people trying to get unemployment benefits, the logjam is taking a toll.

Unemployment benefits are a lifeline keeping hundreds of thousands of Coloradans above water as the coronavirus drives unprecedented economic pain in the Centennial State and across the country.

The stakes of payments making it out to people smoothly are high with the COVID-19 pandemic triggering a global recession and state unemployment rates at record levels. But Colorado’s unemployment system, from its confusing online filing portal to its perpetually overloaded call center, has become a weight around the necks of an untold number of people struggling to stay afloat and with few to no other options for support.

“All I have gotten from unemployment since I filed my claim was a PIN number,” Brian Dicht, an unemployed sous chef who lives in Glendale, said. He filed his initial claim April 13. “I would literally be homeless if it weren’t for my parents.”

Originally from New Jersey, Dicht, who is in his early 30s, worked in Tel Aviv and New York

City before landing in Colorado about 18 months ago. He started working at a restaurant called Earnest Hall about March 10, right as the outbreak was taking off.

When he lost his job a month later, he immediately filed an initial claim for unemployment, overcoming a few technical glitches along the way. His personal identification number arrived at the start of May with a slight delay. Then a message popped up on his online account saying his claim was “postponed.” There was no explanation. Did he do something wrong on his initial application? Did the state need more information? Did the system flag him for having a New Jersey driver’s license?

And there is no easy way to get a live person on the line and find answers. Dicht said he calls the unemployment helpline every day, often multiple times, trying to get his claim moving forward again. Every time he said he gets the same recorded message about high call volumes and a request to call back.

His back against the wall, he dialed a new call center set up just for contract and gig workers and got through easily, only to be refused help, which caused weeks of frustration to spill out.

“I cursed the person out because I was so pissed off,” he said. “I have been trying to get through to someone for a month. When I finally get through, you can’t help me? You can help me, but you are choosing not to.”

Straight-forward claims can move fairly quickly, within two weeks from applying to a direct deposit into a bank account. The state has paid out on 86% of the applications it has received since mid-March, Cher Haavind, deputy executive director for the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment, said Thursday. But with more than 550,000 people trying to get unemployment, that means at least 77,000 have been rejected or are still waiting.

Make a misstep along the way, though — say report the wrong amount of wages earned, or fail to make enough income in the prior quarter, or mistype the number on your driver’s license — and things can get complicated fast.

Haavind said one problem created by the crushing volume of claims is that a national database that states use to check whether a worker has earned income in other states is bogged down. Nearly 39 million people across the country have applied for some form of unemployment since the pandemic began.

To be fair to the state, there are explicit rules the federal government lays out, and many workers, unfamiliar with the process, don’t understand the precise steps they must take. Some people file and don’t follow through in establishing their accounts online, expecting funds to arrive like stimulus money. Others don’t update the hours they worked or didn’t work, which they are required to do every two weeks under the state’s normal system (once each week for federally funded pandemic unemployment assistance recipients).

The challenge of helping people navigate those rules is amplified by the sheer number of people in need.

During the Great Recession, the high-water mark for unemployment claims filed in a week was 7,749 in January 2010. In the past nine weeks, 52,957 people have filed initial claims for support on average. And there are tens of thousands more who have applied and been rejected for one reason or another.

With the help of $20.2 million in administrative funding from the federal government, the department of labor has focused on creating “multiple pathways” into its unemployment systems, Haavind said. In the early days of the pandemic, when the state’s overloaded claims system routinely was kicking people out of their applications before they could complete them, the department launched last-name specific filing guidelines asking only half of all applicants to file at any given time. Similar guidelines are now in use on the payment request portal to help things run smoothly.

When the CARES Act opened up unemployment benefits to self-employed people, gig workers and a host of others who previously were ineligible for benefits, the labor department tweaked a contract with its technology vendor, Deloitte, to create a separate filing system for those claims. It came with a separate call center staffed by 101 workers.

Other tools the state is relying on to get information out to people include webinars (one is coming up Wednesday), hold messages that address frequently asked questions and even automated chatbots. On a press call Friday, Haavind highlighted an effort to work with a technology company to create “virtual agents” capable of providing automated responses to some questions. Haavind said many things people call the department to ask don’t require in-person assistance, but for callers it’s about hearing the answers from a human being.

“They are looking for some reassurance,” she said.

The state’s regular unemployment call center is staffed by 82 employees, although workers from around the department pitch in by responding to general inbox emails and answering callback requests as they can. The department has hired 83 more call center workers but doesn’t expect them to be ready to jump on the lines for some time. Training can take up to 12 weeks, Haavind said.

“(Unemployment insurance), again, is not a system where you can hire a temp today and they’re on the phones tomorrow,” Haavind said, referencing the depth of knowledge required to understand eligibility requirements and more. “If it was just taking a claim and processing a claim that would be great. That’s not how the system is set up.”

In the meantime, people seeking help call, call and call again just hoping to get lucky and get through to an agent.

Arvada resident Cheryl Kelly estimates she called the unemployment hotline 175 times before noon one day and never got through. Kelly, 58, lives with her husband and son. All three lost their jobs because of COVID-19 within a few weeks of one another. The family house is paid off, but Kelly is facing substantial medical bills for a series of unexpected surgeries last year and the family has to pay income taxes related to her husband’s former job in the oil and gas industry, property taxes and other bills.

“Not in our wildest dreams did we ever think that all three of us would be laid off at the same time,” she said.

In Kelly’s case, she was working part-time at a Fred Meyer Jewelers location inside a King Soopers. Originally furloughed, she applied for unemployment and received payment for her first two weeks out of work. Then she was told the jewelry store would be closing permanently. She went in for two days, April 29 and 30, to help close up shop for good.

When she went to fill out her next payment request on the state’s system, she reported those hours and that her employer was closing for good. At that point, she said the system closed her claim and gave her a message instructing her to call the call center. She has been trying to get through ever since.

“I’m just so frustrated. What do I do? That’s my question,” Kelly said. “I just need to talk to them and find out. Am I eligible or ineligible? Is there something I’ve done wrong? How do I get back in?”

Before the pandemic, the state’s unemployment call center fielded 1,000 to 1,200 calls per day, Haavind said. Now those numbers have gone up to 10,000 to 20,000 per day. Right now, the department is able to field about 4,000 calls daily, leaving at least 40% and as many as 80% of calls unanswered.

Unemployment system problems are not unique to Colorado. Washington D.C.-based think tank the Economic Policy Institute surveyed 24,607 people in the second half of April. The survey found that for every 10 people who lost their jobs in the prior four weeks and were able to successfully file unemployment claims with their state labor departments, there were at least three more people who tried to apply but were unable to get through because of system issues. Beyond that, there were two more applicants who gave up because they found filing too difficult.

“At the time, 22 million workers had filed initial claims, and what we found is somewhere between 8 million and 12 million more people could have filed had the process been easier,” EPI economist Ben Zipperer said.

A major problem in Zipperer’s view is that unemployment systems in many places have been neglected or made to be intentionally difficult.

Given the rate of job loss, Zipperer believes it would be in the best interest of people and the economy if states approved everyone who applied for unemployment immediately and then went about verifying information. Catching false claims is a lower priority than making sure needy people are supported right now, he said.

“If we spend a lot of effort on weeding out fraudulent claims, that will cause a lot of congestion in the system and prevent a lot of valid claims from coming through,” he said. “And you are going to end up kicking people off the rolls that should have been on the rolls of the first place.”

Even in states that may run out of money for paying claims — as is likely to happen in Colorado as soon as this summer — the federal government will come in with low- to no-interest loans.

The feds have alerted Colorado they will be auditing claims filed here, Haavind said. And the state’s payment request system has multiple warnings about entering false information.

The Colorado Department of Labor, and Gov. Jared Polis through executive order, have taken down a number of barriers to speedy payments, including waiving work search requirements, Haavind said. Processing that used to take four to six weeks now is completed in 10 days or so, depending on the claim.

The worst-case scenario around rushing out payments is that it could blow back on workers, Haavind said. Those who received too much support might have to pay it back later if proper protocols aren’t followed.

“For us, we’d like the payments to be proper and expedient, and that’s what we’re working on,” Haavind said.