More than 3,000 Anne Arundel residents filed for unemployment last week, a slight drop from last week’s count of 4,441 claims. Jobless claims across Maryland also took a small dip, with more than 37,000 jobless claims filed, down from 47,545 claims.
The weekly tally now includes self-employed and gig workers who are out of work, although the website designated for these workers was only running for two days of last week’s total. Gov. Larry Hogan said Wednesday about 33 new accounts are created per minute with around 780 claims filed an hour on the labor department’s new portal.
Unemployment in the state and across the county has skyrocketed as a result of government orders to close schools, non-essential businesses and disperse crowds in an effort to slow of the deadly coronavirus’ spread.
Maryland Department of Labor saw more people file for unemployment since coronavirus first disrupted the state’s economy in mid-March than the total amount of claims filed for all of 2019.
More than 387,500 people across the state have filed a jobless claim since March 1. In Anne Arundel County, 37,938 people have filed for unemployment benefits. The trend continues to follow the national pattern, where 3.8 million Americans filed for unemployment last week, bringing the total jobless claims to 30 million.
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Meanwhile, claimants in Maryland and Anne Arundel County report running into chronic and maddening technological problems trying to file for benefits. The state recently rolled out a new website called Beacon that was branded as a one-stop solution for streamlining the state’s inundated unemployment insurance system. The site crashed within minutes of its Friday launch.
In the six days since Beacon launched and crashed the same day, the website activated over 245,000 accounts while more than 100,000 new claims have been submitted and more than 273,000 weekly certifications have been filed, according to Maryland Department of Labor.
But many self-employed and contractor workers are still unable to navigate the filing process, reporting frozen pages, repeated glitches and wait times of over five hours to get into the system to file their claim, if they can get in at all.
“Nobody is helping you. If you don’t get it right the first time and you can’t get on the phone with somebody, which you can’t, you are literally screwed,” said Annapolis resident Nancy Lee Galloway. “It’s unconscionable. You need to be able to talk to someone, either via the phone or in an email conversation, so that they can actually fix the application and submit it.
Galloway is a self-employed contractor with South River Boat Rentals, which closed down due to coronavirus. Galloway logged onto Beacon when it opened Friday but hasn’t been able to advance her application. Every time she’s let into the system after waiting in an hours-long queue to access her account, it remains frozen or she’s kicked off.
“I’ve been in the queue seven times now. It goes to the same place in a frozen application and I cannot get out of it. I’d like to erase the whole thing and maybe start a new application. You can’t do that. You can’t do anything. And you can’t get a real person to actually help with the glitch,” she said.
Shady Side resident Tom Huntt has worked every year since he was 13. But the pandemic sent the 85-year-old auto parts driver home and out of work to protect his wife, who has an underlying health condition. Huntt initially filed his claim on the state’s system before Beacon launched, but he needs to access Beacon to do his weekly filings.
His application is also frozen and won’t move forward. Huntt and his wife try several times a day to troubleshoot the problems, but when they get off the queue — which can have more than 150,000 people in a virtual line — and into the system, it locks up again.
“I came home (from work) because of the governor telling me to come home and said that they were going to let us get unemployment,” Huntt said. “I’m sure a lot of people just give up. I’m stubborn.”
Huntt received a letter in the mail about an appointment with a labor department employee to discuss his eligibility but he has yet to receive a date or time.
Hogan admitted in a press conference Wednesday that the department of labor and the IT contractor it hired to create the website has failed. The labor department has since said it reassigned over 150 state employees and hired 100 new employees to address the issue and improve the process. The department also said it partnered with a vendor to bring in 200 additional call and claim takers to help with the unprecedented rate of claimants.
“With all of the economic struggles that people are already going through, they should not have to worry about getting the resources that they need and that they deserve,” Hogan said in a press conference Wednesday. “We will do whatever it takes to get this straight.”
Despite a collective feeling of frustration and resentment by residents who have been unable to file claims, other Maryland residents have submitted claims with eventual success.
A private investigator and Charles County resident who declined to give their full name missed their 10-minute window to file on the state’s previous system five times before Beacon rolled out. He stayed up until 3 a.m. for multiple nights hoping fewer users would be online. He’s since been able to log on Beacon within minutes.
Maryland Department of Labor posted several video tutorials and handbooks on social media in recent days to walk claimants through the filing process and address common issues shared by angered residents in dire need to file for emergency financial assistance.
For Galloway, who described her experience as being stuck in a “glitch-ridden unemployment application hell,” the labor department wouldn’t need to issue tutorials if it was straightforward and accessible to use.
“Usually the state of Maryland is so together. This is what is really surprising. This has been a real fail,” Galloway said.
We will be posting a series of tutorial videos throughout the day to help Marylanders navigate the new BEACON One-Stop application. The first video will explain how to activate and login to your account. To watch the video, visit https://t.co/BX1XWIS9cb.
— MD Department of Labor (@MD_Labor) April 29, 2020
Reporter Olivia Sanchez contributed to this article.
