Here’s how to apply for federal unemployment benefits in North Carolina, starting Friday
Applications will open Friday for unemployed people in North Carolina who don’t qualify for state benefits but might be able to receive federal jobless benefits.
It’s what many self-employed people have been waiting for, especially contractors and those in the gig economy.
But how long it’ll take before qualified people start receiving the payments isn’t clear yet.
“We want to get assistance out to people as quickly as possible, while also making sure we protect the integrity of the program by verifying that claimants meet the eligibility requirements for these benefits,” said Lockhart Taylor, the head of the state unemployment office, in a press release Thursday.
Everyone in North Carolina who’s out of work, whether it’s due to coronavirus or not, can apply for unemployment benefits online at des.nc.gov. Then state officials will determine whether they qualify at all, and if so, whether they qualify for the state or federal benefits.
Once people know which program they’re being considered for, there will be two separate phone lines to call with questions. The main state benefits line is 888-737-0259 and the line for the federal benefits opening Friday is 866-847-7209.
There are three types of federal unemployment benefits, all of which will pay up to $600 a week for four months — potentially thousands of dollars more than what North Carolina pays out in its own benefits.
One of those three types of federal benefits, for people who are already receiving state benefits, started going out last week in North Carolina. It has since put $430 million into people’s pockets, on top of $200 million from the state, state officials said Thursday.
But the program opening up Friday is the one that many have been waiting for.
How will applying for benefits work?
Called PUA, for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, it’s meant to go to people who are out of of a job but do the kind of work that doesn’t allow them to qualify for any state benefits. That includes people in the gig economy, freelancers, independent contractors and other self-employed people.
And for the roughly 140,000 people who have already applied and been rejected for state benefits, there is some good news: They probably won’t have to start from scratch to apply for PUA, said Lockhart Taylor, the head of the state’s Division of Employment Security.
“They should be able to go back into their claim and have the option to just answer additional questions,” Taylor said Tuesday.
Addressing a state legislative committee focused on coronavirus and its economic fallout, Taylor said the Friday start date is a day earlier than originally planned.
However, he told a lawmaker he couldn’t say how long it might take for the state to process claims, and then start paying out the money.
Taylor said that in order to speed things up, state officials are considering approving minimum payments for people who definitely qualify for at least that much, so they could start sending those out. Later, officials would take a more detailed look at whether they should retroactively pay people more than the minimum.
Can NC handle the claims and calls?
A record number of unemployment claims has swamped the state office since mid-March, and Taylor said he expects yet another surge of claims and calls Friday related to these new PUA benefits.
But the office will be better prepared than it has been in the past few weeks, he said, a period in which many people have complained of the overwhelmed phone lines automatically hanging up on them instead of putting them on hold.
Before coronavirus, Taylor said, there were around 500 people who worked for the unemployment agency. By Friday when the PUA claims open up, he said, they will have 1,000 people just answering phones, plus 600 more working on everything else.
And in a change from recent weeks, the phone lines should be open on Saturday, too.
The extra workers and overtime pay are significantly more than the state had planned on for the agency when lawmakers wrote the current budget. But Taylor said that’s just something they’ll have to figure out later.
“If it has to go up to do this faster, we will continue to increase and then beg for some additional money later on,” he said. “But right now we’ve certainly utilized all hands on deck.”
Long wait for benefits
It has now been five weeks since Gov. Roy Cooper ordered bars and restaurants to close except for takeout and delivery, followed by another order closing barber shops, gyms, movie theaters and other businesses.
Many affected workers won’t qualify for state benefits, so they needed the PUA program. And the long wait has frustrated many.
“They don’t understand that everything’s accelerated,” Mark Barroso, an out-of-work freelancer from Pittsboro, told The News & Observer in an interview — three weeks ago — about his own frustration with the wait for the PUA benefits.
Congress and President Donald Trump approved the benefits in a stimulus package close to a month ago. But the Trump administration took more than a week to write the rules for how the program would actually work, and state officials then spent the last few weeks reviewing those rules and trying to set up a system to vet the claims.
In some states that have already started the PUA applications, there have been complications.
Colorado Public Radio reported Monday that there, “a complicated set of rules” from the federal government combined with “vague” messaging from the state has led to confusion and frustration, as people who thought they should get the benefits have been denied.
This story was originally published April 21, 2020 at 2:35 PM with the headline "Here’s how to apply for federal unemployment benefits in North Carolina, starting Friday."
