This week, Governor Newsom shut down several industries in San Diego County and others that were on his coronavirus watch list because of the increasing number of positive cases. Now, many San Diego County residents are filing for unemployment for a second time.
Denise Dabney has been a hairstylist at Coronado Bliss Salon for nine years. She never thought her dream job would lead to filing for unemployment twice in the span of four months.
"I obviously had to get unemployment. I didn’t jump on unemployment right away so, I was expecting I could get back pay and I didn’t end up getting back pay," Dabney said.
She only got about two weeks of unemployment for the two and a half months she was unemployed the first time her salon shut down in mid-March. The salon reopened in June, but Dabney says she was only allowed to schedule half her normal clients every day in order to practice social distancing.
"We weren’t able to double book, so that already was a dip in our pay as well," she said.
This week, Dabney filed for unemployment again, but she's worried about losing the $600 of federal stimulus that was added to her unemployment benefits that are set to expire on July 25.
Nationally, 1.3 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits for the first time this week, but experts say those who are refiling might have a slight advantage at getting their benefits faster.
"If somebody became unemployed and they filed for unemployment insurance and they were able to get it and then they did go back to work, as soon as they became unemployed again, it's actually a little bit easier to get a benefit restarted than establish a new benefit," said Michele Evermore from the National Employment Law Project.
Before the pandemic, the record high for weekly unemployment applications was nearly 700,000.
