It’s the 1st of the month and the coronavirus jobless worry and wait as bills come due

Wednesday is the first of the month, and thousands of Kentuckians who have been forced out of their jobs in an attempt to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus are struggling to pay bills.

The forced closures of all non-essential businesses — entertainment venues, tattoo parlors, clothing stores and countless others — has put many families in an unfamiliar position at a time when Kentucky’s unemployment insurance system has repeatedly collapsed under the weight of a record-breaking number of claims.

Among those workers is Ariel Johnson, a single mother of two, bartender and caretaker of her elderly grandmother, who has yet to receive unemployment benefits and who said she isn’t sure how she’ll make her mortgage and car insurance payments, both due Wednesday.

“I pay a house payment, I pay a car payment, I have insurance and electricity and water. It’s all of that that I’m just really worried about,” Johnson said. “I’m hoping right now that the unemployment will come through, and I’ll just cross those bridges as I come to it.”

Johnson, who lives in Floyd County, worked as a server, bartender and manager for almost seven years at a restaurant in Pikeville before the restaurant’s dine-in services were shut down earlier this month.

She typically worked only the weekends, and was able to support her family and pay bills based on that income. But when the restaurant was forced to shut down dine-in service, her hours were cut to just part of one day a week — too little to justify her commute to Pikeville.

Johnson’s last day of work was March 14. She filed for unemployment about two weeks ago, and said she expects to find out Wednesday whether she qualifies for benefits.

Aside from the mortgage payment and car insurance due Wednesday, Johnson said she has a number of other bills — electricity, car payment, water — due in two weeks.

Like countless other workers across the state, she doesn’t know how she’ll make those payments.

“If worst comes to worst I’m hoping that maybe I can call the creditors and make some kind of arrangement with them,” she said. “I don’t know just yet what I’m gonna do.”

Unemployment claims system overwhelmed

Data from the U.S. Department of Labor, released last week, showed that a record-shattering 3,283,000 Americans filed for unemployment benefits in the week ending March 20.

That includes 48,847 Kentuckians, up from just 2,785 initial claims in the prior week. The spike was, by far, the largest in decades, and created extended crashes of the state phone lines and website used to file claims.

The number was expected to increase dramatically again last week, when Gov. Andy Beshear announced that independent contractors, substitute teachers and others who were previously ineligible for benefits but lost their jobs because of the coronavirus outbreak are now eligible for unemployment.

On Tuesday, Beshear acknowledged that the state’s computer systems are automatically rejecting many of the claims filed by those who are newly eligible and pleaded for patience. He said the state is adding 50 to 100 new employees each day to handle the flood of claims.

“We will get it right,” he promised.

By Wednesday afternoon, Beshear said the state had sent 40,000 acceptances to individuals who had previously received automated responses that said their unemployment applications had been rejected.

Brandon Baker, a tattoo artist in Hazard, said he has tried to file for unemployment about five times, but each time the website has crashed during his application process.

“It’s pretty frustrating,” Baker said. “I’ve tried it multiple times and I get about halfway through it and it says ‘Error.’”

Baker said he quit a job at Lowe’s just two weeks before the shutdown of tattoo parlors because he secured a full-time apprenticeship at a tattoo shop in Hazard.

His savings and commission work — designs and paintings that he sells online — and his wife’s income will sustain his family for now, but Baker said he’s concerned about their financial security if the closures stay in place for several months.

“The savings that I had, with bills coming out, it’s slowly starting to dwindle,” Baker said.

‘There’s no certainty on anything’

As workers scramble to make their upcoming bill payments, the governor has signed an executive order suspending all housing evictions in the state and the Kentucky Public Service Commission, which regulates most utilities in the state, ordered utilities to halt disconnections during the coronavirus disruption.

Melanie Meade, a hair stylist and single mother of two who works in Pikeville, said she and other workers are concerned about bills that may pile up during the possibly months-long coronavirus closures.

Meade said she’s debated what bills to let go, and which to continue paying with the limited income she’ll receive while she is unable to work.

“I’ll make myself sick if I worry about what’s coming,” she said.

Like several others, Meade said she was unable to file unemployment through the state’s phone line, but called a local office in Prestonsburg that helped her complete her application.

Ashley Fuller, a single mother of two and restaurant employee in Pike County, said she faced similar concerns about bills that could pile up over several months.

“We’re all laid off in different workforces, and every one of us is like, ‘What happens when the power bill is $1,200?’” she said. “How many people are gonna be struggling then?”

Despite Beshear’s order to halt evictions, Fuller said she knows several individuals whose landlords have demanded payments despite the recent layoffs.

Dakota Howell, a single mother and restaurant worker in Pikeville, said her landlord has been lenient, but that money for other necessities, such as groceries, will still be hard to find in the coming weeks.

Howell said she had committed to a $500 payment to a music festival this summer, and that, rather than canceling the payments, the festival will continue to withdraw $100 a month despite it being rescheduled.

“That’s $100 that I don’t have to spend on food,” she said.

Her phone bill, which came in at nearly $100, was due at the end of March.

“Before, I kind of knew what was going to happen day-to-day, and now it’s just up in there air,” Howell said. “There’s no certainty on anything — there’s no certainty on a job, there’s no certainty on seeing my friends or even seeing my family.”

This story was originally published April 1, 2020 at 1:14 PM.