The Mississippi Department of Employment Security is encouraging folks who have lost employment due to COVID-19 to file claims online.

More Mississippians applied for unemployment last week as COVID-19 continues ravaging the nation’s economy than any other week recorded by the U.S. Department of Labor since 1987.

The nation saw a record-breaking number of unemployment claims, 5.8 million (not seasonally adjusted) in the week ending March 28 — 30,946 of which were in Mississippi, based on preliminary numbers. The second highest week for claims in the state was 21,215 in September of 2005 following Hurricane Katrina.

Comparing the first two weeks of March to the last two, as more states began restricting the movement of its residents to contain the spread of the virus, unemployment claims surged over 1800 percent across the country and 1700 percent in Mississippi from 2,026 to 36,465.

Because of new federal legislation that boosts unemployment checks by $600 for four months, jobless workers who secure benefits in Mississippi will see their weekly amount more than triple from a maximum of $235 to $835. The exact amount depends on a person’s eligibility and how much they earned at their job.

The Mississippi Department of Employment Security, which administers the benefits funded by employer taxes, is encouraging folks who have lost employment due to COVID-19 to file claims online. The website has glitches, the call centers are inundated, leading to long wait times, and the department has asked any applicants experiencing issues to email [email protected].

In a Tweet, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann said the department had hired 70 new contact center employees as calls have surged from 600 to 6,000 per week. “Delays persist,” he wrote on Twitter March 27.

Applicants may also avoid the online application by filling out a downloadable form and emailing it to [email protected] and avoid the centralized hotline by calling their local WIN Job Center, which they may locate here.

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Anna Wolfe is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter who covers inequity and corruption in government safety net programs, nonprofit service providers and institutions affecting the marginalized.

She began reporting for Mississippi Today in 2018, after she approached the editor with the idea of starting a poverty beat, the first of its kind in the state.

Wolfe has received national recognition for her years-long coverage of Mississippi’s welfare program, in which she exposed new details about how officials funneled tens of millions of federal public assistance funds away from needy families and instead to their friends, families and the pet projects of famous athletes.

Since joining Mississippi Today, she has received several national honors including the Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting, the Livingston Award, two Goldsmith Prizes for Investigative Reporting, the Collier Prize for State Government Accountability, the Sacred Cat Award, the Nellie Bly Award, the John Jay/Harry Frank Guggenheim Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting Award, the Al Neuharth Innovation in Investigative Journalism Award, the Sidney Award, the National Press Foundation’s Poverty and Inequality Award and others.

Previously, Wolfe worked for three years at Clarion Ledger, Mississippi’s statewide newspaper, where she covered city hall, health care, and wrote stories about hunger and medical billing, earning the Bill Minor Prize for Investigative Journalism two years in a row.

Born and raised on the Puget Sound in Washington State, Wolfe moved to Mississippi in 2012 to attend Mississippi State University, where she currently serves on the Digital Journalism Advisory Board. She has lived in Jackson, Mississippi since graduating in 2014.