Christina Jackson: Pandemic exposes DC government’s failure to distribute unemployment benefits to people in need

The COVID-19 pandemic caused many DC residents to lose their jobs and erased years of employment progress. In February 2020, just before the pandemic began, the District’s unemployment rate had fallen to a five-year low of 4.9%. Two months later, unemployment more than doubled to 11.1%. Some people who lost their jobs have since found new employment, but not nearly enough have been able to do so. As of September 2021, the unemployment rate was still 6.5%.

Even worse, the District government has failed to ensure that people who lose their jobs receive the unemployment benefits to which they are entitled. These long-standing failures became especially conspicuous when the federal government expanded unemployment benefits during the pandemic. 

The pandemic presented a stress test to the District’s unemployment system, and the DC Department of Employment Services (DOES) flunked.

For many eligible people, the resulting loss of unemployment benefits has been devastating. For claimants who rely on unemployment aid to pay for food, rent and other essentials, not getting it can mean being forced to move elsewhere or going without secure access to food. The effects were especially severe for racial minorities. Today, the expanded unemployment benefits have expired, and the District’s unemployment system remains dire. 

In March 2020 and again in March 2021, Congress expanded and enhanced unemployment benefits for people who lost their jobs; the latter bill extended pandemic-related unemployment benefits until Sept. 4, 2021. But these benefits did not claim themselves — getting them meant meeting various requirements, including providing documents and other information, and filing weekly claims on the internet or over the phone. Needlessly complex even under the best of circumstances, the claims process imposed even more hurdles because DOES did not manage this process smoothly or efficiently. As a result, more than 13,000 District residents — or 1 in 5 filers — had not received all the benefits they were due as of May 2021.

Although the pandemic certainly didn’t help, DOES’s systemic issues predated COVID-19. The department’s online claims portal is outdated and has long suffered from bugs and glitches. Remarkably, in the year 2021 (nearly 15 years after Steve Jobs introduced the original iPhone), the DOES portal works only with desktop computers or laptops — not with smartphones. Even after the federal government provided funds in 2012 to help DOES modernize its claims system, work on the new system did not begin until 2016; the department then missed its 2018 deadline to unveil the new website. Nine years and $9 million later, District residents are still wrestling the old, outdated system for filing claims. Unemployed people who cannot afford a personal computer must instead call DOES and quite possibly spend hours talking to workers who often do not understand the details of the different unemployment programs and who provide information that is inconsistent or incorrect. 

DOES also fails people who do not speak English. People with limited English proficiency often experience long waits on the phone for interpreters and struggle to complete forms that are not printed in their native languages. 

These problems worsened during the pandemic. For example, it took DOES more than three weeks to update its systems to reflect the expansion of unemployment benefits. Many eligible District residents received less money each week than they were due. For others, the department took more than six months to distribute Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, which aided workers who were ineligible for regular unemployment insurance. 

Yet more problems plagued the city’s distribution of Pandemic Unemployment Emergency Compensation, which provided extended benefits for workers who exhausted their regular unemployment benefits. Beyond the months-long initial delay, some filers waited for weeks or months for DOES to process their benefits claims, only to be told — without any written decision or notice of appeal rights — that they were ineligible and had to apply instead for regular benefits in Maryland or Virginia. Others received money initially but were later told by DOES that their benefits had been provided mistakenly and must be returned. 

In response, several public-interest organizations testified at multiple DC Council hearings to highlight both the problems and the need for specific remedies — including expanded language access, better training of DOES employees, specific updates from the department about how its expanded staff would hasten claims processing, and the need for a council-appointed official to oversee the department’s transition to a modern website. In addition, the Office of the Inspector General has begun auditing DOES. 

Amid this heightened scrutiny, DOES’s director has minimized or challenged many of the criticisms, pointing instead to the 80% of the benefits that have been processed and predicting that the new online filing system will be ready in another 18 months. 

We are far away from solving the District’s unemployment insurance crisis — a crisis that ultimately affects people’s health, safety, and lives. Although advocates have been organizing to promote reforms and the DC Council’s oversight may produce modest improvements, the need for dramatic change remains urgent. 

Christina Jackson is the executive director of Washington Council of Lawyers, the public-interest bar association for the District of Columbia. 

---

About commentaries

The DC Line welcomes commentaries representing various viewpoints on local issues of concern, but the opinions expressed do not represent those of The DC Line. Submissions of up to 850 words may be sent to editor Chris Kain at chriskain@thedcline.org.