With restaurants and other service industry employers across the state shuttered due to the COVID-19 crisis, unemployment benefit seekers are overwhelming the state's capacity for handling their claims. | Wikimedia commons
With restaurants and other service industry employers across the state shuttered due to the COVID-19 crisis, unemployment benefit seekers are overwhelming the state's capacity for handling their claims. | Wikimedia commons
Newly unemployed workers in Illinois faced an additional challenge when trying to file for unemployment benefits as they faced jammed phone lines and a malfunctioning state unemployment website.
With many across the county laid off in the face of COVID-19 closures, Illinois residents are joining the throngs of American workers trying to find some subsistence through unemployment benefits.
But the same orders that put so many Illinois residents out of work also closed state unemployment offices, forcing those looking to survive the crisis to file their claims either over the phone or online.
While Gov. J.B. Pritzker recently acknowledged the problems for filers and made promises to fix it, issues have persisted as the state’s system continues to be overwhelmed.
Philip Winston, a 44-year-old from Rogers Park, told WBEZ that he was happy with the overall response by the governor’s office to the coronavirus situation. Yet, as a tour guide in Chinatown, Winston has had to join the unprecedented number of Illinois residents trying to file for benefits through the state’s unemployment program.
Winston said he has not been able to even get an answer by calling the state’s unemployment help hotline at 1-800-244-5631.
“When I called the help hotline, there’s a busy signal constantly—all the time, all day,” Winston told WBEZ.
Like others, Winston had no more luck with the state website either.
Jim O’Boyle, 30, of Lakeview, was a cashier at a restaurant that, like all other establishments across the state, had to lay off workers when food service restrictions went into place.
“I haven’t been able to get the online thing to work at all,” O’Boyle told WBEZ. “I tried doing it a bunch of different ways. I think it’s not really accepting any new registrations.”
When O’Boyle was finally able to reach someone by phone, it was only after waiting on hold for an hour, he said.
A spokesperson for the Illinois Department of Employment Security told WBEZ that the department had received an unprecedented number of claims since restrictions began.
“I don’t think we’ve ever seen this before, even in periods during the 2008-2009 crisis,” the Pritzker spokesperson told WBEZ.
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