Four months ago, Alan Chastain moved from Louisiana to the Houston area for a promising new job as a sales representative at a sign company. By late March, Chastain had been let go.
It wasn’t a shock; as the coronavirus pandemic worsened and the economy entered a tailspin, the owner had been up front about the likelihood of layoffs. The real surprise came when Chastain began trying to file a claim for unemployment benefits. Since getting laid off two weeks ago, the 35-year-old has spent at least four hours a day trying to apply for benefits with the Texas Workforce Commission (TWC). So far, he’s had no luck.
Saturday morning, he and his 7-year-old son—each armed with a cell phone—called the agency’s hotline a combined 400 times, only to get busy signals or a recorded voice telling Chastain to apply online. But the agency’s web servers have been entirely overwhelmed by the surge of applicants, causing the site to crash and making it near impossible to enter the online portal. When he finally was able to start an online application, he was told the agency needed more information—he needed to call the jammed phone hotline in order to continue.
