Depending on the political environment of the state one is in. It could be capped at a useless amount, or the unemployment department minimally staffed. I know someone in NJ that has a pending status for 2 years with no response or ability to contact the state, and they have 8 years of W-2 showing they paid unemployment insurance.
No, you can see tons of Reddit posts about people not being able to speak to anyone at NJ unemployment. You can try calling at anytime of day and the machine will say (after 130 seconds of automated prompts) that all agents are too busy and to call back the next business day.
In the event you do get through, you reach a line level agent, and they say a supervisor has to look at the case, and to wait 6 to 8 weeks before calling back. That’s it, nothing else.
