As an on-call bell captain on the Las Vegas Strip, Nathaniel Manns sometimes works all three shifts—overnight, swing and morning—in the same week. “It can get pretty busy,” he said.
These days, Manns, like millions of other Americans, is out of work because of shutdowns driven by concern over the coronavirus pandemic. With Nevada casinos shuttered through at least the end of April in a statewide closure of nonessential business, Manns’ last day of work was March 15. His last paycheck came shortly thereafter.
Despite repeated attempts to file for unemployment benefits with the Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation, as of April 8, the 36-year-old—like countless others—hadn’t been able to get through.
Manns is thankful to receive some assistance through the Culinary Workers Union, which is providing health insurance through November 1 and assisting its 60,000 members with rent, mortgage and utility payments as needed, according to Geoconda Argüello-Kline, secretary-treasurer of the union. But Manns’ money is quickly drying up.
“I filed the week after my last day of work, and I’ve heard nothing since then,” Manns said. “I’m in good spirits, and I have hope about everything, but it’s definitely frustrating how unorganized [unemployment benefits] are. I understand things happen, but I can’t use that excuse at work. I have to do what I have to do.”
Officials have acknowledged that the Nevada jobless office was overwhelmed by the record 93,000 applications filed the week after the governor ordered businesses closed. Another 71,400 Nevadans sought unemployment the following week.
Tiffany Tyler-Garner, the unemployment department’s director, concedes that the state’s response in the weeks after Gov. Steve Sisolak’s directive hasn’t been perfect. She also said improvements and enhancements are being made to the system. For instance, it beefed up in staff, going from 75 employees to 200.
“We’re expanding our resources daily to respond to demand,” Tyler-Garner said. “We’re increasing staffing, hours and technology support. We’ve never seen anything like this, and a lot of people are focusing on us getting through this workload.”
Tyler-Garner said that in seven days, the office went from 5,000 claims per week to more than 90,000. To put those numbers in perspective, it received just over 119,000 unemployment claims total in 2019. And during the recession of the late 2000s, about 8,900 claims were made during the busiest week, she said.
Others who seeks benefits are complaining about problems navigating the unemployment system. Take Robert Dornisch, an out-of-work table games dealer who said he hasn’t been able to recover his online password from when he filed for unemployment almost 10 years ago. Like others, his daily attempts to get someone from the office to answer his calls have been unsuccessful.
“I’m certain there are a lot of people who feel like nobody is listening,” Dornisch said. “When I tried to file online, it told me I had an existing account. That was from 2010, when I had last utilized [unemployment] benefits. To get my password, I had to answer a question from 10 years ago.”
More help is on the way. Jobless Americans will soon start seeing a $600 a week increase for up to four months in unemployment benefits as states begin to implement the federal CARES Act coronavirus relief program. But, of course, recipients would need to have successfully filed a claim to start receiving benefits, and many are still helplessly reaching out.
“I can assure people that every eligible claimant’s claim will be backdated to the first date of eligibility,” Tyler-Garner said. “The anxiety that folks have about losing a week, every claim will be backdated and funded. People are not losing benefits and will not lose benefits.”
Some claimants have rushed through the application process and submitted incorrect information, which has further delayed benefits, she said. User errors, Tyler-Garner said, can be as simple as employees not entering the correct employer name for their company. For instance, an employee at the Flamingo would want to enter Caesars Entertainment Corp. instead of the name of the resort.
The errors are especially troublesome, claimants say, because they can’t contact anyone to fix a possible error—or to even confirm an error was made.
“We could not have anticipated the magnitude of claims we’ve seen, especially since we saw eight years of federal-level cuts to the program because unemployment was down,” Tyler-Garner said. “If somebody would have said you need to successfully go from 5,000 claims to almost 100,000 claims in seven days, that would have been disingenuous. We hear people, we know the financial pressure they’re facing and we empathize. We’re working diligently.”
For some, Manns included, promises of things to come will ring hollow until unemployment insurance payments are received.
“You’re already at your lowest point because you lost a job or were laid off,” Manns said. “The last thing you want to do is try to call to plead your story and make sure they have the right documents. I can’t even get through on the phone or on email. I’ve called any and every number connected to Nevada unemployment, and it rings and rings or is just busy. It sucks.”