Nearly 4 million California workers have filed for unemployment in California over the last seven weeks, Gov. Gavin Newsom estimated on Friday, a shocking milestone that underscores the extent to which the coronavirus has infected the state’s feeble economy.
An avalanche of claims for jobless benefits has buried the state’s Employment Development Department and overwhelmed the EDD’s broken call center and clunky computer system, and the governor acknowledged during a regular news briefing regarding California’s war against the deadly bug that the EDD’s response must improve.
Jobless workers are feeling “legitimate frustration,” Gov. Newsom said Friday.
A growing number of workers have told this news organization of their inability to navigate the byzantine unemployment claims processing system being operated by the state government.
All told, 3.9 million people have filed for unemployment benefits since March 12, Newsom estimated. The state has paid out a jaw-dropping $7.5 billion in unemployment claims during those roughly seven weeks.
During March, California completed first payments to only one out of every eight workers who filed initial claims for unemployment — a pace that badly lags the one out of every five workers in the state who have filed for unemployment.
The 3.9 million jobless claims mean that almost exactly 20 percent of California’s 19.3 million workers have filed for unemployment since March 12.
“I have had zero success in processing a claim,” Barbara Jordan, a Bay Area resident, said in an email sent to this news organization Friday. “I’ve been out of work since March 15. I have tried my best to contact, email, phone so many different numbers. I have been listening to phone recordings ad nauseam. I can’t even get through.”
