TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — It was a long weekend of worries for more than a million Floridians who have found themselves on the digital unemployment line since the outbreak of COVID-19.
The website designed to accept jobless claims was shut down for maintenance an upgrades over the weekend. As of Monday, it's back online – but critics argue the problem needs a lot more than a little tune-up to be fix.
As of Saturday, April 25, Florida’s Department of Economic Opportunity has received 1,891,530 total claims.
- 824,279 have been confirmed to be unique, meaning some people end up filing the same claim multiple times.
- 610,152 – 74 percent – have been submitted
- 209,713 – 25.4 percent – have been paid.
- 169,520 more people got their money since the week before.
PREVIOUS STORY: Florida’s unemployment claims website down until Monday morning
The CONNECT website has been a highly-publicized disaster since newly unemployed Floridians began flooding the filing portal in March. Some have spent as many hours trying to log into the system as they have missed on the job.
Gov. Ron DeSantis has called the system “cumbersome” and the state’s initial response “unacceptable.” He made several public efforts to increase server capacity and improve the system’s functionality, which at times has required the system to be shut down overnight. But system shutdowns have increased frustration ant the backlog of people struggling to file claims.
Critics of the system, rolled out in 2013 by former Governor Rick Scott, say it’s not just overwhelmed, but also designed to discourage claimants and reduce unemployment rolls.
“It is completely insidious,” says Michele Evermore, senior policy analyst with the National Employment Law Project in Washington, D.C. “When the state emerged from the recession, there was huge pressure to cut benefits rather than raise taxes.”
Because people are not eligible for compensation until their claim is officially “received” by the state, there has been mounting concern that people would be denied benefits simply because the state system isn’t up to the task.
Florida’s Department of Economic Opportunity released this statement last week:
Governor DeSantis continues to eliminate unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles to ensure claims are processed and paid as quickly as possible. On an emergency basis, Governor DeSantis suspended the requirement that recipients submit a report every two weeks regarding their job search and ability to work in order to keep receiving benefits. The governor’s administration also suspended the one-week waiting period that required claimants to wait seven days before they could receive reemployment assistance.
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