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1 in 5 workers in Washington state have filed for unemployment benefits

OLYMPIA, Wash. — New numbers released by Washington’s Employment Security Department Thursday show 787,533 people have filed for unemployment insurance since the beginning of March. Commissioner Suzi LeVine said the system has paid out nearly $1.5 billion in benefits to Washingtonians, with about a billion of that in federal funds.

Yet there are many people — approximately 280,000 by the state’s estimation — who have applied for benefits but not yet received them, and there are still others who are dealing with more complicated issues.

Samantha Christopherson of Poulsbo said she received one payment, but the others appear to be held up.

“I’m grateful for this time I get to spend with my little one, but it's kind of a scary unknown,” she said.

>> Related: 30 million have sought US jobless aid since virus hit

Christopherson went from a full-time job to a part-time job, then from a part-time arrangement to maternity leave at her job at Bainbridge Event Rentals to have her baby, Lucille, in January.

But now there’s no job to come back to due to coronavirus measures, such as stay-at-home orders and social distancing, resulting in cancellations of any group events.

“The wedding industry has just been completely crippled,” she said. Christopherson said after getting one payment for unemployment, her case is now in adjudication; this means there’s a question that needs to be addressed. But she can’t get through to the state.

“At least four or five times. There are times I’ve spent three hours on the phone, waiting — and it disconnects!” she said. “And you call back, and it disconnects again.”

Thursday, Employment Security Department Commissioner Suzi LeVine implemented additional steps to help workers.

That includes getting people who are eligible but haven’t received money to take action, such as filing weekly claims and updating people who are in adjudication on where things stand.

“We're staffing up to increase customer service capacity for adjudication to give our skilled adjudicators more time and space to do their specialized work,” LeVine said. “The adjudication queue is the biggest area that we are working on. We don’t know if we’ll be able to resolve them in the next couple of days, but our belief is that we’ll be able to address those within the next couple of weeks.”

LeVine also said that they’re working on bulk-clearing common issues, such as people who started new jobs right before the outbreak and aren't eligible for regular unemployment.

“Now they're eligible for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance,” she said, referencing expanded benefits from the federal CARES Act. “So we are looking at ways we can find those folks and make them ineligible for the one so that they can start to apply for the other.”

But what about the disconnections Christopherson and many others have mentioned?

“Are you aware of any kind of problem within the phone system that needs to be addressed, or is there perhaps additional training needed for employees when it comes to transfers?” KIRO 7 reporter Linzi Sheldon asked.

“It is pretty much a pure-volume issue, Linzi,” LeVine said. “And we are working hard to resolve that. In terms of people getting disconnected, I will circle back with my team to see if there are issues on that front.”