Old tech, staffing shortages led to unemployed workers waiting weeks for jobless aid

After losing her administrative job last spring, Kentucky resident Jennifer Graves didn't have to wait long to start receiving emergency federal unemployment benefits as COVID-19 crippled the U.S. economy. It was when the single mother of four had to affirm her status at the end of 2020 that she ran into trouble: Her benefits of $587 a week suddenly showed up as "zero" in the state's unemployment system. She reached out to the officer help, but to no avail.

"My emails to them got a little more desperate, and more desperate. I actually did not have enough money to pay April bills. I barely had $100 in my checking account," she said. "I would fret about how much gas I was putting in my car."  In mid-March of this year, 11 weeks after her payments stopped, Graves got a lump sum with the back pay she was owed amounting to nearly $5,000. She celebrated by going to the grocery store for the first time in weeks and buying her 12-year-old daughter taquitos. Then, in April, the payments stopped again, and Graves couldn't reach the unemployment office for weeks.