Phone problems and website glitches persisted Friday at the California labor agency responsible for handling a torrent of unemployment claims arising from the economic fallout spawned by the coronavirus.

A growing number of people were complaining through online posts and to news organizations Friday that the website operated by the state’s Employment Development Department has ceased to function properly and has locked them out when they attempt to make inquiries about their unemployment benefits.

“This is very frustrating,” said Veronica Martinez, a Richmond resident who has been attempting — without success — to reach the EDD by both phone and the online system regarding her jobless payments.

Martinez recently lost her full-time job at Marin General Hospital in San Rafael. Since then, she launched a pressure-packed quest to obtain her unemployment benefits or even find out whey the payments will begin.

“I have called Gov. Newsom’s office,” Martinez said. “They said they have no answers for me.”

Unemployment has skyrocketed in California and nationwide after state and local government agencies, hoping to curb the spread of the coronavirus, throttled huge swaths of the economy through an array of business shutdowns and shelter-in-place mandates.

Carol Bramlett, a Sonoma resident, also said she has been unable to log into her EDD account on the embattled state agency’s website. A succession of login attempts by Bramlett simply put her into a loop back to a generic EDD section of the site.

“Instead of fixing the problem the state has decided to give up and shut down all access,” Bramlett said.

The EDD was asked on Friday to discuss the situation with the website.

Numerous posters on the “Is It Down Right Now” site said they continue to be unable to reach the EDD online system as well as the telephone call center.

“The EDD website is still down for me,” Sandra Quezada posted on her site. “I tried calling but my calls keep dropping.” Quezada’s Facebook page said she had been working at a financial services company in Los Angeles.

State officials have scrambled to hire hundreds of people to staff the inundated phone banks at the state agency, but now the department is wrestling with a swarm of access attempts at the online site.

“The persistent inability of claimants to access the Unemployment Insurance OnlineSMsystem during this time period” means that people who had filed claims for dates from March 14 through May 9 should avoid more requests, the EDD urged on its site.

That’s a message that people such as Bramlett and others received when they attempted to log in.

“I’m locked out of my account on the website,” Bramlett said Friday.

Potentially adding to the misery are maintenance plans for the EDD. The entire site was scheduled to be offline from 6 p.m. Friday, April 24 until noon Saturday, April 25.

At least 3.35 million California workers have filed for unemployment since mid-March, according to the U.S. Labor Department.

“It is easy for somebody to tell you to be patient,” Martinez said. “The governor and all the state leaders have everything they need on a daily basis, but we have to go without. My application was submitted on March 25. We have bills to pay but I have received nothing.”

Considering California’s vast resources, Martinez said she is shocked at the ongoing problems at the state EDD.

“This state has so much wealth, we pay so much in taxes, our roads are not fixed, the streets are covered with potholes, but they cannot get this thing fixed,” Martinez said. “The governor should lead by example. These payments should be sent out automatically to the people. There is no excuse for these problems.”