‘You just feel helpless’: Hundreds of Californians still waiting on unemployment checks

Before the coronavirus pandemic, San Francisco resident Taylor Buckley was busy at his construction job. So busy, in fact, that he’d been putting in enough overtime to feel like he was in a pretty good place financially.

But then came March 16: San Francisco issued a shelter-in-place order and Buckley was laid off immediately. Wasting no time, he applied for unemployment with the Employment Development Department of California (EDD) on March 17.