‘This is unprecedented.’ Seeking security amidst record-breaking unemployment

The coronavirus pandemic is impacting us in many ways. As more and more businesses close their doors -- thousands of people are losing their jobs across the state.

Claims for unemployment benefits are surging. Washington State’s Employment Security Department Commissioner Suzi LeVine gave us this update.

The following interview, as-told-to KUOW, has been lightly edited for clarity.

How Washington State’s unemployment program works, and who is eligible

Those individuals who have been laid off and who have 680 or more hours in the past 12 months are mostly eligible for unemployment insurance.

Independent contractors currently are not eligible for our unemployment insurance program in Washington State. We are however, advocating that the federal government declare this a natural disaster.

If and when they do, that unlocks something called disaster unemployment assistance. That will provide assistance for all those who are not currently eligible for unemployment insurance. Governor Inslee has sent a letter to the president and to FEMA to try to get them to declare this and to put this into place.

In terms of, separately, gig workers or people who work in the gig economy, it really depends on a case-by-case basis. We evaluate, are they truly an independent contractor-- we have certain evaluation metrics for that-- or are they actually more like an employee?

We encourage them to apply. Our customer service agents will be going through and evaluating, on a case-by-case basis among them, which is eligible based on their employment contract with their respective employers or platforms.

If you are eligible, what you can expect in payments

It is partial wage replacement. An individual who earns $50,000 a year for example, would have $481 per week that we would estimate that they would receive in that benefit.

With the emergency rules that we enabled last week, that expanded to include individuals on quarantine and in isolation in different ways, really we have tried to make it available to a very broad set of individuals. We are continuing to evaluate ways in which we can help more people get the benefit for which they're eligible faster, and helping more people get access to the benefits.

Application numbers by work sector

We are seeing the largest applications among the hospitality sector and especially those who are part time workers in restaurants and in hotels. Also in tourism, we are seeing a tremendous amount of layoffs in that space. Some in retail, but those are the biggest areas that we're seeing.

In addition to that, we know that a lot of individuals in the gig economy are profoundly affected. We're seeing a lot of applications from that space as well.

We just rolled out last week's numbers. Overall, we saw a year over year increase of about 116% in our overall new claims filed. However, that was last week. This week overall, we are seeing our daily new claims coming in, that are equal to or in excess of an entire week, during the peak weeks of the 2008 2009 recession.

Covering an unprecedented rush of claims

To be clear, we actually are seeing volumes that are four to five times what we saw in 2008 and 2009. We have never seen anything like this in the history of our organization. And we certainly haven't seen it at the speed with which this has happened. This is unprecedented.

I so appreciate your question of do we have enough people. No, we do not. And we are both hiring rapidly, but also moving many people from other areas of our organization into positions to help. And we encourage people, in fact, to apply online and to use our digital application as opposed to calling in if they can.

The time it takes to get paid

Typically, when you apply, your payments will start on the second week after that. We have waived that. If all goes well, if the claim itself doesn't have any fact finding that needs to be done around it, then conceivably they could be receiving their money within seven to 10 days.

Listen to the interview by clicking the play button above.