Independent contractors and those who are self-employed may be able to start applying for unemployment benefits as soon as next Friday.
Indiana Department of Workforce Development Commissioner Fred Payne says the goal is to have a system to handle the applications ready on April 24. But the system to send out the payments isn’t expected to be ready until May 4. “Essentially, what this process is, is that it consists of gathering and collecting different types of financial information,” Payne said during state officials’ COVID-19 briefing Thursday. “We actually get that together and it tabulates that data and then it actually disburses a payment to an eligible individual.”
Until then, Payne said that independent contractors who try to apply for unemployment will continue to get a denial, but the Department of Workforce Development is emailing them with the next steps they’ll have to take to get their benefits.
Meanwhile, those who are already eligible for unemployment will start getting their $600 weekly increase on Friday, a few days earlier than originally thought. But Payne said that fully implementing that extra benefit required the department’s online filing system to be taken offline for a few hours Thursday evening.
This comes as Indiana continues to see “extreme volumes” of unemployment claims. “The week ending April 11, we experienced and we saw 118,184 new claims successfully filed in Indiana,” Payne said. “That number is slightly down from the previous week, but it still posts one of the highest weekly totals of unemployment claims filed in Indiana history.”
The Department of Workforce Development continues to experience a high call volume, with over 800,000 phone interactions so far this month. Payne asked for patience, as his department works to address issues with dropped calls and long wait times.
