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New Hampshire struggles under an unemployment surge

As businesses have shuttered or scaled back amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the N.H. Department of Employment Security has processed a record number of unemployment claims, paying out millions to tens of thousands of Granite Staters since mid-March.

But some local residents say they’ve run into issues applying, including an overwhelmed phone system and weeks-long delays in getting payments.

“Like many people, I’m in a holding pattern right now with no end in sight,” Karen Johnson, who provided childcare for teachers’ kids until the schools closed last month, said in an interview over Facebook Messenger.

Johnson, a Keene resident, said she applied for benefits March 29. As of early Friday afternoon, she had not yet been informed whether she would qualify.

The Sentinel spoke to a dozen area residents over the past two weeks for this story. Some said the filing process had been relatively smooth, and they received their first payment within about 10 days.

But others said it took weeks before benefits showed up in their mailboxes or bank accounts. Some were still waiting as of the time The Sentinel interviewed them.

Many also wondered when they would see the additional $600 per week in unemployment benefits that the federal government is providing through the CARES Act. Richard Lavers, deputy commissioner of the N.H. Department of Employment Security, said those increased payments were starting Friday night, and eligible recipients would get them by Wednesday if they have direct deposit.

As they waited for payments, some residents pushed off rent or other bills. Others had enough in savings to get by for now, but said they would run into trouble if the uncertainty lasted much longer.

Marissa Weiner of Fitzwilliam said she relied on tax-refund money she had set aside for the summer, when her job with Franklin Pierce University’s food-service contractor, Sodexo, normally pauses.

“I was all right, but it was very stressful knowing, like, OK, if this keeps continuing, that money’s gonna drain very quickly, and I’m not going to be able to pay for the essential things that I need,” she said.

Weiner was laid off in mid-March. She wasn’t eligible for unemployment benefits the first week because of vacation days, and then it was another 2½ weeks before her first payment arrived on April 8, she said.

Several of those who experienced long delays were self-employed – a category that normally wouldn’t qualify for unemployment benefits. Gov. Chris Sununu expanded eligibility to include them in a March 17 emergency order prompted by the COVID-19 crisis.

Shelby Sheridan owns Elm City Massage, a sole proprietorship in Keene. Her business has evaporated due to the social distancing required to fight the pandemic.

She said she filed her initial claim March 20. It was approved this past Thursday, April 16.

“I can have a month where I don’t have a ton of business, so I was already kind of prepared for that, which was nice,” she said. “But definitely two months would make me a little nervous.”

New claims, long waits

Lavers, the Employment Security official, said the state is seeing “claim volume like nothing before ever in the history of the unemployment system.”

On Monday, he said the number of new claims in each of the past three weeks “exceeded the new claim volume for an entire year that we had been experiencing since the last recession.”

Lavers said Friday that the state employment office had received more than 127,000 new claims since March 17 and had made more than 128,000 payments totaling over $36 million.

Lavers said payments are going out faster than ever for most claims – within eight to 10 days.

“For regular claims right now, we’re actually paying them faster than we did prior to this kind of spike in unemployment,” he said. “And that’s because it’s really an all-hands-on-deck mode of processing claims and working to continue to find efficiencies.”

But it can take longer for people who don’t have traditional employment histories or who have recent earnings in other states, Lavers said. He attributed some of the delay to the sudden expansion in eligibility, which stems from both state and federal actions.

“Those types of claims are taking longer,” he said. “But again, it’s because of the significance of the changes that need to be made in order to pay individuals that historically, in the unemployment system, would not have qualified for a benefit.”

He said Friday night that claims that had not yet been paid should start getting paid over the weekend and “should largely be caught up by Wednesday.”

Those with short employment histories have faced an added hurdle.

Sununu’s March 17 order immediately broadened eligibility to some groups, including the self-employed, people unable to work due to a quarantine and parents caring for kids affected by school closures. But other changes related to the federal CARES Act, which passed in late March, are not expected to take effect in New Hampshire until this coming week.

That includes granting benefits to people with little to no recent earnings. Normally, a worker must have earned at least $1,400 in two of the past five quarters to be eligible for benefits.

Jody Steele of Keene started working in September after a period as a stay-at-home mom. This year, she said she was working 40-plus hours a week between two part-time jobs, at Target and In The Company of Flowers, a downtown Keene florist.

But once the schools closed in mid-March, as a single mom she had to stay home with her four children, she said. She filed for unemployment, but her claim was denied because, she said, her work history wasn’t quite long enough. She said she met the income threshold in one quarter last year and was about two-thirds of the way there in another.

She appealed the denial and also filed a second claim in April, after a new quarter began. She said she was notified Wednesday that she will, in fact, qualify.

Steele said she had planned to use her income-tax refund to pay rent. Instead, with the loss of work, she had to spend it on day-to-day costs and tell her landlord the rent would be late. (She was understanding, according to Steele.)

The food stamps she reluctantly applied for didn’t show up until Thursday.

“It’s been scary,” she said. “Without that money, without that little bit of income tax that I had left, set aside for my rent, I wouldn’t have had food.”

Phones ringing off the hook

The flood of new claims has swamped the state help line with calls and, at times, strained the online filing system. Many of the people interviewed for this story described long waits on the phone – sometimes as long as two hours – and at least one said the website crashed on her.

At one point, the lines were so jammed that Sheridan was calling continuously just to get past the busy signal and into the queue, she said. “I had two phones going with the number programmed in, and I was just repeatedly clicking, ‘call.’ “

Some found the employees on the other end helpful, while others said they had trouble getting specific questions answered. Steele said she got better guidance after she asked for help in a Facebook group and a state employee who happened to see her post contacted her directly.

Two area residents whose applications were denied said they had left repeated voicemails on a separate phone line for appeals, and had not heard anything back.

Lavers said the state unemployment office has been getting 5,000 to 6,000 calls a day. The state has ramped up staffing to handle the volume, bringing back recent former employees and pulling in National Guard members and employees from other state agencies.

U.S. Rep. Annie Kuster, D-N.H., whose district includes the Monadnock Region, said the CARES Act includes money for state unemployment offices to hire more staff to deal with the volume.

“The biggest frustration that we hear from constituents has to do with the IT issues – the tech issues dealing with the website, lengthy delays on the phones,” she said in an interview Friday. At the same time, she emphasized the “good news” that millions of dollars had been paid out to those in need.

Whatever their frustrations, most people said they understood the call center employees were doing their best in a tough situation.

“I’ve been trying to not take it out on the people that have been answering on the phone, because I know they’re probably stressed out,” said Emma Nickerson, a Fitzwilliam resident who said she was laid off from Panera Bread in Keene last month. “They’re dealing with hundreds if not thousands of people a day with the same problems, the same questions. Everybody’s – everybody’s struggling here.”

This article has been updated to include the latest employment claim data as of Friday night and an additional comment about when delayed claims should be paid.

These articles are being shared by partners in The Granite State News Collaborative. For more information visit collaborativenh.org.