Carrie Roth, the head of a state agency tasked with handling unemployment benefits, presented a state legislative committee this week with good news.
She said the Virginia Employment Commission has eliminated its claims adjudication backlog and reduced the backlog for first level appeals by 33%.
The progress is welcome, especially given the commission was at the center of a class-action lawsuit in 2021 alleging “gross failures” in providing residents with unemployment benefits throughout the pandemic. A judge issued an order directing the agency to make various changes and closed the case last year after seeing improvements.
But while updates this week focused on continued progress, several legal aid organizations say many claimants still face serious communication barriers with the agency, as well as one of the longest wait times in the nation for an appeal.
“There is still a ton of work to be done,” said Pat Levy-Lavelle, senior attorney with the Legal Aid Justice Center. “Even now, more than three years after the pandemic started, people are still having challenges.”
Levy-Lavelle said the justice center continues to hear from claimants who can’t log into the online self-service portal. They say they’re stuck in an infuriating loop: The online portal denies them access, so they turn to the commission’s call center for help but are then directed back to the portal.
Customer service is a priority, Roth told the committee.
“It’s very important that everybody understands that we keep the customer at the center of everything we do,” she said, adding the agency hired a customer service advocate and required all employees to undergo additional training.
Roth told legislators this week that cybersecurity concerns led the agency to clamp down on the usability of its customer portal, but said “additional tools” have since allowed for more accessibility. She explained between 70 and 77% of users can now successfully log in to the portal.
Levy-Lavelle doesn’t see that as a victory.
“The fact that nearly a quarter of Virginians who are trying to access the website can’t get through is a huge problem,” he told The Virginian-Pilot. “There are many websites of government agencies and private companies where security is of critical importance that have still figured out how to let bona-fide people through.”
Levy-Lavelle said it’s important to remember that delays, confusion and communication barriers can lead to dire consequences. He’s seen how families suffer when the unemployment support they thought they could count on didn’t materialize.
“People have lost housing,” he said. “People haven’t been able to pay for medications. They’ve fallen behind on car payments and lost their transportation. It’s a problem when Virginia can’t deliver emergency aid to Virginians who are going through a crisis — and that really needs to change.”
The maximum weekly unemployment benefit people can currently receive from the state is $378.
COVID-19 led to a massive flood of unemployment claims nationwide. Nearly 1.4 million claims were filed in Virginia in 2020, followed by 609,772 in 2021. Those numbers dipped to 165,937 in 2022, according to VEC data. During the committee meeting Tuesday, Roth said claims are now back to pre-pandemic levels with 77,932 filed so far for 2023.
Virginia’s unemployment rate dropped to 2.7% in June, which Gov. Glenn Youngkin celebrated Friday as he touted the state’s growth in the labor force.
Flannery O’Rourke — an attorney with the Virginia Poverty Law Center who focuses on unemployment — said she appreciates that the commission has made progress. But she said she continues to hear from people who are experiencing a wide range of issues.
Some can’t even get the call center to pick up, she said. Explaining that she has contacts at the commission, O’Rourke said she’s been able to help some claimants obtain information about their cases.
“A lot of what I am doing is just getting information from the VEC for them,” she said. “That’s not the traditional role an attorney would play in this process, but that’s where we are.”
She added this isn’t sustainable because there aren’t enough legal aid attorneys in the state to provide this type of support to all claimants.
“We can’t become the call center just because the VEC can’t (meet the demand),” she said.
O’Rourke was also alarmed by the commission’s failed bid to dismiss appeals that it asserted were filed late.
“We are talking about constitutional due process; it’s a pretty important right,” she said, adding the state mandates that even late appeals are entitled to a hearing. “It’s given me pause and has really forced me to deeply inquire into their methods.”
O’Rourke said the agency’s “ill-conceived” effort did nothing to help those waiting on their appeal.
The average wait time for an appeal hearing in Virginia was 427 days as of March 2023, according to the Century Foundation. Only Nevada and Alabama had longer wait times.
Moving forward, O’Rourke said she hopes the General Assembly will give the agency more funding but also provide tighter oversight.
“I would also like to see the state invest more in holding the agency accountable,” she said.

Nyeema Ware is among those who describe the application process as chaotic.
“None of them seem to know what’s going on and none of them communicate,” she said.
Explaining that she worked as a cashier in Virginia Beach when the pandemic hit, she said her employer advised her to take an unpaid leave of absence and apply for unemployment because of a high-risk pregnancy. Ware had recently learned her baby had a serious heart condition.
She said her request for unemployment in 2020 was initially approved, but later halted after the agency determined she had not actually been eligible.
Bank statements Ware provided show she received $4,896 in payments from VEC between Feb. 1, 2020 and July 31, 2021. But Ware said she’s been in a back-and-forth with the agency over whether she would have to pay the money back. Ware provided copies of two letters sent by the agency that said she may be eligible for an overpayment waiver. But the letters, sent the same day, include different balances. One says her balance is $12,000, more than she says she received, the other states her balance is $3,996.
“They kept giving me the run-around, sending me to this person or that person,” said Ware.
Ware said she realized she would need an attorney’s support and obtained representation through the Legal Aid Society of Eastern Virginia.
“It’s been very stressful,” she said, adding her family has also been dealing with multiple surgeries her newborn daughter needed.
While many may understandably be upset, others note that it is important to consider the context.
Michele Evermore, senior fellow at The Century Foundation, said every state has struggled with unemployment issues since the pandemic hit. The foundation is a nonpartisan think tank headquartered in New York.
“I don’t think Virginia is unique,” she said, adding the huge influx of claims in 2020 caused chaos nationwide. “States had to ramp up and stay ramped up — they sort of had to build the plane as they were flying it.”
Employment agencies nationwide subsequently saw staff burnout and quit, which only exacerbated problems, she said. And the fraud rings that popped up to take advantage of pandemic-related unemployment benefits presented another challenge.
“This crisis caught everybody flat-footed,” she said.
Katie King, katie.king@virginamedia.com