A year-and-a-half later, impact of state’s broken unemployment system lingers
This piece, by investigative journalist Christopher Heath, ran in the Orlando media market, after we sent out our media advisory with the offer to connect reporters to storytellers in their area. (See the press release here).
It is called a safety net because it is there to prevent people from falling into poverty. Yet when hundreds of thousands of Floridians needed the state’s unemployment safety net during the pandemic, it wasn’t there. Now a year and a half later, the ripple effects continue.
“I unfortunately don’t have savings, or didn’t. I don’t have a retirement, and I just prayed, hoped.” That’s how Jennifer Dotson described being without a job or unemployment for four months in 2020. It was very stressful I don’t even know how to describe it.”