ATLANTA — After a record number of Georgians filed for unemployment, the Georgia Department of Labor needed to process a record number of claims and issue a record number of unemployment benefit payments this week.
Plus, this was the first week in which the state also needed to distribute $600 federal unemployment benefit payments as outlined in the COVID-19 relief package Congress passed, known as the CARES Act.
The domino effect appears to have created a technical issue due to the volume of unemployment payments, leading to some Georgians not receiving their full unemployment benefits when they expected to.
"Payments started coming in the week after with no issue," Leah Anotniazzi said.
The Atlanta resident said when the dental office she works at closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, her employer filed for Antoniazzi and her co-workers to receive unemployment benefits.
Antoniazzi said she received state unemployment benefits for two weeks with no problems. Her husband, who is also out of work, received his own unemployment benefits without issue.
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This week, Antoniazzi said they each expected to receive both state and federal unemployment payments by direct deposit.
"When I opened my bank account like I did last Wednesday, the federal funds had been in there. The $600 minus taxes if you have that taken out, which we do. That was in there, but no sign of the state money at all," Antoniazzi explained.
She sent 11Alive a picture of her computer screen after she logged into her Georgia Department of Labor unemployment account. The account showed a payment was made to her for both state and federal benefits.
But with no state funds in her bank account, she then noticed her husband experienced the same issue. Antoniazzi began searching through social media.
"I saw a ton of posts about this, that I wasn't the only one that was having this issue," she described.
Several tweets and posts on Facebook this week described individuals having the same issue as Antoniazzi. There were also posts from employers describing their staff having similar issues.
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GADOL spokeswoman Kersha Cartwright told 11Alive the state sent $400 million to its financial institution on Monday night to cover this week's state and federal unemployment benefits.
As was the case with Antoniazzi's account, this led to notices appearing in the GADOL accounts of people approved to receive state and federal unemployment benefits, that payments were made.
But, despite the notices of payments being made, only a portion of the $400 million in funds was transferred on Monday night.
"We had difficulty transferring that file, so it was re-transmitted for just those $600 federal supplemental payments only," Cartwright said.
Starting on Tuesday morning and working through the week, staff then began individually going through impacted accounts and issued the smaller state benefits payments.
Georgia state benefits checks are based on an individuals's previous salaries. The maximum state payment before taxes is $365.
"They should see it today, or possibly tomorrow, based on when it was issued, but those payments will go out this week," Cartwright said.
She added that payments typically appear in bank accounts 24 to 48 hours after being issued.
Cartwright didn't have a number available for how many accounts were impacted but said the issue didn't impact everyone receiving unemployment benefits.
"We apologize for that delay and we have modified our system to allow for larger payments to accommodate future $600 supplemental payments as well as the regular weekly benefit payment," Cartwright said.
The payment hiccup happened after Georgia handled a record 861,000 unemployment claims since mid-March, accounting for roughly 10 percent of the state's population. As a result, the state paid benefits to more than 290,000 Georgians last week alone, a total representing almost double the number of payments issued in all of 2019.
11Alive has heard from many Georgians that have had no problems receiving unemployment payments, but also many others who have dealt with struggles to talk directly with a GADOL representative about issues they have receiving their payments.
To respond to the influx of claims, the state is looking to add more staff to handle customer service issues.
"We are talking with a couple of different companies about doing a customer call center and trying to get some more people hired with the Georgia Department of Labor to answer those calls," Cartwright said. "But we are encouraging people to continue to visit our website, visit our social media pages and look at frequently asked questions. We are updating those every single day. We are spending time looking at the most common problems that people may be experiencing and trying to address those and giving possible answers for those questions."
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