Only 6 percent of people who've applied to Florida's unemployment system have been paid

Florida’s unemployment crisis

Only six percent of people who have filed for unemployment in Florida have had their claims processed.

ORLANDO, Fla. - Thousands of Walt Disney World employees are out of work and not getting paid, and now many are worried if they'll get unemployment benefits soon.

As of Sunday, Disney furloughed 70,000 employees.

A report from the Financial Times found that a total of 100,000 employees will not be getting paid starting this week.

They report the company will save $500 million a month by suspending pay to its employees.

"It’s daunting. It’s scary," said Furloughed Disney employee Paul Cox. "We’ve gone from making a comfortable living to having no income and we are raising a small child."

Since March 15, Florida's Department of Economic Opportunity has received 1.5 million unemployment applications.

The state agency says that some of those applications may be duplicates because people can apply in several different ways.

According to the website, about 650,000 of those claims have been verified.

Only 6 percent of those verified claims have been paid to about 40,000 people as of Monday.

"This is not a Disney issue, this is a Floridian issue. If we don’t demand from our elected officials, nothing will change," Cox said.

Unions are calling on officials to fix the bogged down unemployment system and say more needs to be done.

"It’s encouraging to see that the governor’s office does seem responsive to the outcry, but we are certainly not content that the improvements are where they need to be," Matt Hollis, president of the Service Trades Council Union.

With record numbers of people applying for unemployment, furloughed employees say they're worried about what's next.

"I have friends that work in my industry that have been fighting to get unemployment for six to seven weeks now," Cox said. "It’s massively scary, the broken state of the system."

Thousands of Disney employees now furloughed

Coronavirus has put thousands of Floridians out of work and claims are expected to spike now that Disney furloughs began on Sunday. The unemployment system is already strapped.

Disney worked with the state to expedite the unemployment application process for its employees.

Employees were able to skip the initial registration step with the state's already overwhelmed unemployment system.

Disney employees are now waiting for an email from the Department of Economic Opportunity to complete the application.

Gov. DeSantis said in a press conference last week that it doesn't mean Disney employees will be taking someone else's place in line.

"I think when you know you're going to have a massive amount of people from one employer, and that's announced, and we can work with them to get that info., I think that would probably be better for everyone," Gov. DeSantis said.