On unemployment

Whoever designed Wisconsin’s unemployment system has never been laid off. 

It’s been two weeks since I lost my job as a statehouse reporter, and instead of providing some reassurance, or a safety net, our unemployment system has only added to my stress and frustration. 

My unemployment application still hasn’t been processed; I thought I’d turned it in, but when I logged back in the following week, it said I hadn’t. I did four job-search activities and found out I didn’t need to. They sent me a letter saying I needed to send them ALL my pay stubs from my last job to verify what I earned… but shouldn’t they have that information? 

All this and I still don’t know how much money I will receive, or when, or even if I’ll receive any.

I wasn’t going in blind. Wisconsin’s unemployment system was an objective disaster during the pandemic. A Facebook group for people dealing with the unemployment system, was filled with questions I couldn’t understand, much less the answers. 

For a story, I talked to Angela Torres, who had been waiting for eight months to receive help and was worried she would lose her home in the meantime. When I spoke to her, legislators were planning on tightening up the rules for accessing funds—reinstating waiting periods and work search requirements—so she was mad. And rightfully so.

“That’s our money. They didn’t work for it, we did,” she said. “It’s the money we busted our hump and our jobs for, that our employer put in for our wages. And they want to take it away from us.”

Her story was more common than it should have been. Instead of a helpful hand, the system feels like a fist wrapped tightly around the money you were told you could have. You can’t even see how much there is until you solve the riddle, and it’s waiting for your answer, anticipating you’ll get it wrong. 

And I suspect I’m not the only person who had to learn how to navigate a hostile system at a time when my brain felt like cotton. 

One thing I didn’t appreciate until I had experienced a layoff first-hand, was how disorienting and draining it is. 

Before the layoff, I had plans; I had plans for what I was going to write that afternoon, the following week, the following month. I was planning what I wanted to write in a few months, at the end of the legislative session, in the run-up to the gubernatorial and senate races, on election day.

I had plans for the money I was going to earn. Mostly I was going to save for a down payment on a house, where I could cultivate a sustainable garden with wildflowers, vegetables, and herbs. Eventually adding on a beehive, chickens, or quail. 

And maybe, someday, even a child. 

On the day I was laid off, my stomach tightened when I realized that in the reshuffle of the biweekly Friday meeting, I was in a meeting where I couldn’t see who else was invited. As soon as the CEO said that we were “terminated” “effective immediately,” I was cut off from email, Slack, the Google Doc I was still working on. My theatre-kid brain visualized lights being turned off in an empty theater. Tok, tok, tok.

The Zoom meeting ended. My husband works from home. I walked into his studio, stunned, and as the words came out of my mouth, panic flooded my body.

I told my colleagues. I called my parents. I texted close friends. I posted on Twitter and Facebook. And I received a flood of support. The most meaningful was probably from strangers, people who had no social obligation to tell me they appreciated my work.

My mind immediately raced to come up with new plans. I couldn’t sleep because I was building a list of all the projects in my head, composing everything I would write. For three days my head was a soup of conflicting stimuli. The rejection of a layoff1, the dopamine hits from social media2. The exhilaration of new ideas and the prospect of wide swaths of time for exploring new projects, while mourning the plans I’d had. 

When the adrenaline wore off, I took lots of naps. Some people may “rise and grind” in response to a layoff; I prefer to lie down and nap. As the great philosopher Ali Wong once said, “I don’t want to Lean In, ok? I want to lie down.”

By any metric, I’m lucky. I’m married with no children. Two working adults, no dependents (unless you count a guinea pig). Other than rent and a car payment, it’s easy for us to tighten our belts. Eat at home. Keep the thermostat at 68 degrees. That’s what sweaters are for.

Between my savings and severance3 I’ve got a cushion. And I qualify for unemployment.

These are the calculations that ran through my head. I was a freelance English teacher in China, so while those muscles haven’t been flexed in a while, they’re still there. Column A, Column B. What’s going out, what’s coming in. 

Except I don’t know what all’s coming in. I sold a weekly column and am finalizing a short-term freelance project with a nonprofit. I’ve been better able to hustle down some work than apply for unemployment. 

So in the midst of all that, the system clutches your money, eyeing you warily, waiting for you to stumble. The whole point of having an unemployment system is to give people a life raft during a tumultuous time. Some peace of mind. Is that too much to ask?