‘My savings were gone’: millions who lost work during Covid faced benefit system chaos

Americans thrown out of work by the pandemic faced months-long backlogs in receiving benefits, if they arrived at all

Unemployed workers are pushing for reforms and changes to America's unemployment insurance system after millions of workers experienced severe problems in receiving benefits throughout the pandemic.

Workers across America faced long delays in receiving unemployment benefits as state systems were quickly overwhelmed with the mass influx of applications that caused months-long backlogs. Meanwhile, workers who made errors on their applications, had missing records or had their claims flagged had their benefits stopped - and often had difficulty restarting them once problems were resolved.