Still trying to get an unemployment check in Washington state? You are far from alone

Carolyn Adolph

August 05, 2020 / 4:36 pm

caption: Andy Aronis, Assistant General Manager of King's Hardware, smokes a cigarette outside of the boarded up bar and restaurant on Tuesday, March 17, 2020, on Ballard Avenue Northwest in Seattle. "I always felt good working in the bar industry because it's recession proof," said Aronis, who planned to file for unemployment. "The only thing you don't consider working in this industry is if there is a medical pandemic and then we are in the worst industry you could be in."

At last count, 30,000 people were still stuck waiting. The Employment Security Department says it is working on the remaining cases, and is expecting to have the latest update on its backlogs come Thursday.

The state says it has resolved older cases where the claimant had never been paid.

On Bainbridge Island, Andi O’Rourke does not believe that can be true. She has adjudications on claims that remain unresolved. “So I haven’t seen a single cent since I started filing at the end of May," she said.

O'Rourke said she has stopped waking up early so that she can be the first to call Employment Security, explaining that it "wasn't necessarily a sustainable strategy."

Employment Security says it is working to resolve all remaining open cases. Thursday's update is expected to show the level of progress made in clearing up old cases. Officials should also provide some insight on resolutions for people whose checks stopped because of the employment fraud that hit the state in April and May.

But there are many reasons why people are still waiting. To people who are waiting on the phone, trying to decipher information on the Employment Security Department's website, or contacting their state representative, it barely matter why anymore The lack of support from the unemployment system in a fast-moving and deep recession is what stings.

One claimant told KUOW he had waited his turn since April, confident that his case would be resolved in time. When the state announced earlier this week that it had cleared its biggest backlog, his own case remained unresolved. He said he felt his faith in the system was misplaced.

Unemployment insurance is not an entitlement: People must qualify, and even in a pandemic the old rules apply. For this reason, many people have found they can't get assistance. At last count, 318,714 people in Washington state have been determined ineligible for any unemployment payments of more than 1.2 million applicants.

Officials with the Employment Security Department acknowledge that the rigid requirements of the unemployment system, the barrage of applications, and the administrative bottlenecks have led to hardship for many people.

Suzi LeVine, commissioner of the department, told reporters she "did not believe it was the right solution, overall, to use unemployment as our economic bolster."