Kentucky unemployment claims released, thousands still waiting for benefits

Thousands of Kentuckians have not worked in more than two months, and some of them have not received any money in that time either.

On Wednesday, Governor Beshear said the majority of the initial unemployment claims have been filled, but there’s still a lot of people who have not received any money.

With more than 69,000 claims made for the week ending May 9, frustrations are growing for people who haven’t seen results from Frankfort.

WKYT has received numerous calls and emails from people saying they filed for unemployment in March and are yet to receive any money.

Deddrick Polk is among them. He lost his job at CTA Acoustics in Corbin on March 15.

Polk says he filed on March 24 and 9 weeks later has yet to be paid. He says as far as he knows he did everything right, wasn’t under investigation but still has not yet been paid.

Polk says there may have been an issue with his social security card but with offices closed it’s hard to resolve that. He was told he was finally approved on April 5, but still has not received any money. Throughout the whole process, he says he has never talked to a live person.

“I don’t know. I’m just to the point of frustration because I do every single thing it says to do and there’s something new every single time,” says Polk.

Governor Beshear says they have resolved 90 percent of the claims from the end of March to the first of April. He says they are working through federal government bureaucracy and red tape on some of the issues.

Figures from the Kentucky Workforce Development Cabinet shows that between March 15 and May 9, more than 742,000 unemployment claims have been filed.