ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — While gig workers make up 22% of Florida's workforce, many have yet to receive federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance benefits and have received no answers from state officials on when help might arrive.

Fifty-seven days and more than 20,000 calls later, $5,250 that has yet to appear in the bank for Julia Shear's husband.

It’s a numbers game that Shear said does not want to be a part of. 

“It took us 27.5 hours to apply for [my husband] the first time and it took 7.25 hours to apply the second time,” she said.

She, her husband, and her son are currently all unemployed. 

While she got her first batch of benefit  payments on May 13, her husband, a limousine driver for six years and worked until the day his company shut down for COVID-19 on March 17, has yet to receive a cent. 

“It shows he’s eligible but now a week and a half and no payment,” she said.  

Together, Shears and her husband have called the unemployment hotline a whopping 20,842 times (as of the moment I conducted this interview on May 13). 

Of those times, she says she's only gotten through to someone about 13 times. 

​“So you’ve said that he’s eligible for these funds, it’s been a week and a half, you keep telling us to wait 72 hours. Where’s that money at?” Shear said.

As of May 12, the unemployment dashboard shows that only 28,054 PUA claimants have been paid. 

“They’re not paying that money, that PUA money, they’re just not paying people like they should,” Shear said.

“We were asked by our government, our elected officials, to stay home, stay safe, flatten the curve — we did all of those things and it feels like a punishment,” she went on. “It feels like you did everything we asked you to do and now we’re going to push you into homelessness and hunger.”

All they can do is wait for answer. Like scores of other Floridians, however, they simply can't afford to wait. 

“Those are not stories of the American dream," she said. "Those are stories of an American nightmare."