Florida’s unemployment website will be unavailable for all but new claims each night as the system undergoes maintenance and the state works on a backlog of claims because of the coronavirus, the Department of Economic Opportunity said this week.
“DEO will be conducting nightly maintenance to the CONNECT (online unemployment) system to process claims and payments faster,” a news release from the department said. “CONNECT will be available from 8 a.m. to 7:59 p.m. daily. This schedule does not affect individuals that wish to file a new claim.”
As of Tuesday morning, the state had received 1.94 million claims since March 15, with 824,412 considered “unique,” as some people have filed duplicate claims.
Of the unique claims, the state had processed 664,158, or 80.6%, and made weekly payments of up to $275 to 392,051 people, or 47.6%.
About 37% of the processed applicants had been deemed ineligible for unemployment compensation. Payments had totaled $523 million.
For the nearly quarter of a million claims that have been denied so far, it might have been related to a technicality in state law.
RELATED: Denied unemployment benefits? Applied before April 5? You need to reapply
The DEO is confirming that many of the denied claims were because their claim was filed in March. The law requires applicants to apply every quarter, which in this case started April 1.