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New mobile-friendly unemployment website won't help the thousands who already applied

Half a million people waiting on unemployment checks
unemployment-unemployment-claims-department-of-economic-florida-doe.png
Posted at 5:20 PM, Apr 13, 2020
and last updated 2020-04-13 18:59:10-04

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — State leaders recently rolled out a new mobile-friendly website to file for unemployment.

But I-Team Investigator Kylie McGivern found it won’t help the hundreds of thousands of Floridians who have already applied for unemployment on the state's old website.

A spokesperson with the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity said the new website allows them to process claims more quickly.

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But that’s only for those who filed for unemployment on the new mobile site.

“New users who have not filed a claim yet can go online to Floridajobs.org. They can select the button new claimant, file here, it's very easy to use, it can be used on your mobile device, it can be used on a laptop and it gets all of your information in for your claim,” said spokesperson Tiffany Vause.

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But the state did not build the new mobile-friendly website to serve the big backlog of people who are still waiting on their unemployment applications to be approved, which as of last week, totaled nearly half a million.

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The I-Team still has questions about how the state set up the site and is waiting on responses from the Department of Economic Opportunity.