Surge in unemployment applicants overwhelms the state’s website.

State makes changes after demand crashes its system

Between Monday, March 16 and last Thursday, March 19, more than 20,000 people filed claims for unemployment insurance in Colorado, a more than 1,450% increase over filings the MondayThursday prior, according to state officials.

Driven by layoffs at bars and restaurants shut down by gubernatorial order, cratering oil prices and other job losses tied to the spread of the new coronavirus, that exponential jump only hinted at the demand. There were 114,000 clicks on the state’s online unemployment insurance application and 99,000 calls made to the state labor department’s customer service line between Monday morning and Friday afternoon last week, both massive surges.

For every applicant that successfully filed last week, there were many more people who were trying to file and not getting through as an overloaded system repeatedly crashed on them or had to be shut down for maintenance.

“I did successfully, finally get through today, which is awesome,” 25-year-old Courtney Kizewski, a now out-of-work restaurant server in Longmont, said Tuesday after seven days of trying to file online. “I probably spent a total of seven hours overall just doing it, doing it, doing it and the website kicking me off.”

Kizewski’s claim may have been aided by a policy change the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment enacted this week seeking to lighten the load of its own website.

Starting Monday, the department has been asking people with last names that begin with the letters A through M to log on to the ColoradoUI.gov website only on Sundays, Tuesdays or Thursdays, or after noon on Saturdays, to attempt to file unemployment claims. People with last names starting with N through Z are asked to apply only on Mondays, Wednesdays or Fridays, or before noon on Saturdays.

The labor department is also boosting its call center staff to handle the increased workload.

Ninety internal employees were moved to that role Monday. Another 90 call center and document management employees will be added by April 3, according to a news release. On Monday morning alone, 186,000 calls came into the department’s call center, executive director Joe Barela said in a statement.

“One thing that we hope to implement today is to change the on-hold message that is in our system to address some frequently asked questions,” labor department spokeswoman Cher Haavind said Tuesday.

Two of the most frequent questions Haavind cited: Are people who are experiencing a temporary decrease in hours or wages but expecting to return to their jobs eligible for benefits? (Yes.) Are gig workers and independent contractors such as ride-share drivers who have lost work as a result of the crisis eligible? (“As of now, they are not,” Haavind said.)

Department officials are emphasizing that despite the system issue that kept many applicants from filing last week, people who do file should backdate their application to their last day of work and will receive benefits from that date forward if approved.

That’s a fact that’s likely only to soothe people who finally get through.

Cheryl Swanson, a co-worker of Kizewski’s at the Pumphouse Brewery in Longmont, finally got her application through Monday night after trying every day since St. Patrick’s Day. It was a stressful process that had the mother of three setting alarms for 3 a.m. to try to file at lower traffic times on

the website. Swanson and Kizewski are among 80 Pumphouse employees now in a state of coronavirus limbo while the giant brewery is shut down by the pandemic.

“I feel like the weight lifted,” Swanson said of her successful application. “It just happened super randomly. I went in and got the whole thing done in 15 minutes. I was like, ‘Yes!’ ”

Swanson notes that she’s in better shape than many of her co-workers. Her husband can do his retail site design work from home, and the couple have a cushion of savings.

On the opposite end of the Front Range, Colorado Springs resident Michelle Evans went though her own ordeal with the state’s portal last week.

After her last shift waiting tables at Front Range Barbecue on March 16, she began spending time each day applying. She followed officials’ advice to save her progress as she went, but kept getting the same error message that so many outof-work Coloradans received last week. Finally, in the wee hours early Friday morning, she tried filing her application with Internet Explorer instead of a Chrome web browser and got through.

“It still had some bugs, but finally I got to last certify screen and I think I must have hit that 10 times, because I was like, ‘I don’t want to keep getting up at 2 in the morning to keep doing this,’ ” Evans said. “It was definitely a pain in the butt it finally went through.”

Like Swanson, Evans counts herself luckier than most. The duplex she shares with her boyfriend is affordable, and the couple have savings they were putting aside for a house they can tap into if need be. She also was recently approved for some temporary work in an Amazon warehouse, which, with her unemployment benefits, should tide her over.

Back in Longmont, Kizewski and her fiancé are facing some stark realities. He works at another restaurant in town that is doing takeout service and still providing some income for employees but is staying home for two weeks as a precaution because Kizewski has cold symptoms, she said.

“We definitely did not have anything saved up for this,” she said. “We can luckily pay our bills for this month. We have no idea what we are going to do next month.”

With her unemployment benefits approved, Kizewski is hopeful she’ll be able to make rent and pay for other necessities such as food with her credit card.

“Now we are barely going to be able to scrape by,” she said.