'No accountability' | Pandemic-era unemployment benefit delays persist, 5 years later

CABARRUS COUNTY, N.C. — It’s been five years since the COVID-19 pandemic shut down North Carolina, spiking the unemployment rate at 13.5% and causing a strain on the already-stretched benefits system.

This caused significant delays in people receiving their benefits — or even getting ahold of the office to confirm eligibility.

Maegan Mack now lives in Cabarrus County but lived in Western North Carolina when COVID-19 hit. In 2020, she lost her job as a server but kept working at the Asheville Buncombe Community Christian Ministry, helping serve in their homeless shelter for women and children.

“It was like $10 an hour, which doesn’t really go that far in Asheville,” Mack said. “We were considered essential workers, but my hours were cut back. So I was really only working about like 10 hours a week.”

That’s when she made the call to the North Carolina Division of Employment Security, trying to confirm she was eligible for benefits. However, it took multiple tries and many hours on hold before getting someone on the phone.

“I had had to call day after day, after day, after day,” Mack said. “When I talked to them and let them know my situation, my interpretation of it was that I should only make a claim for the job that I had lost.”

That interpretation would cost her thousands. In 2023, she got a letter claiming she had to pay the money back, all $6,500 of it. 

The state says she was wrong to claim unemployment at all since she had a part-time job. Mack says she tried to get clarification from them multiple times, both when she initially reached out and after she got the overpayment letter. 

It wasn’t just delays in phone calls; it also caused delays in payments. The North Carolina State Auditor found the state failed to issue $438 million in unemployment benefits in a “timely” manner at the start of the pandemic.

RELATED: North Carolina failed to pay over $400 million in unemployment in a ‘timely’ manner, audit finds

“A million claims are filed over a 10-week period, and just to put it in perspective, during the Great Recession, we had a million claims over 12 months, and we thought that was a lot,” Assistant Secretary for Employment Security M. Antwon Keith said.

He told WCNC Charlotte the pandemic showed the department where they could make changes, such as adding a call center vendor for future immediate influxes, which helped with unemployment in western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene.

“When we saw the disaster coming in, all we had to do was press the button,” Keith said.

However, the delays did not stop with COVID-19. Another report by the North Carolina State Auditor found the timeliness of payments got worse in 2023. Federal regulations require North Carolina to deliver at least 87% of first payments within 14 days. In 2023, 43% were late.

Keith says this dip is because of staffing shortages.

“We had people that just simply left, but we had a lot of people that delayed retirements during the pandemic, which I’m eternally grateful for,” Keith said. 

He also said they have since hired more people and implemented dashboards to “see exactly where claims are within the process, mitigating any hiccups.”

While he acknowledges Helene was another setback, he says he’s confident in the office’s ability to bounce back.

Even in the last few months, Mack says she still has not been able to set up a payment plan, either through the phone or online portal, leaving her with $4,000 left to pay.

“That seems like no accountability,” Mack said. “How do I know what I’ve paid unless I’ve been documenting it myself?”

She says this is an example of a larger issue in the benefits system.

“A lot of the benefits that we receive are really meant to kind of keep you in a place of dependence, instead of rewarding you for the effort that you are giving and for that you are putting forth,” she said, “As soon as you make over a certain amount, then you lose your benefits. There’s no type of process where you’re weaned off.”

This comes as a bill moving through the NC General Assembly would increase benefits, something Keith says he supports. House Bill 48 would increase potential benefits from $350 a week to $450 a week.

Contact Julie Kay at juliekay@wcnc.com and follow her on Facebook, X and Instagram.