When Jonathan Knotts exhausted his unemployment benefits in March and could not find another job, the 33-year-old packed up his home in Herndon, Virginia and moved with his wife and toddler to his parents’ home in Columbus, Ohio.

This week, though, Knotts finally got relief: about $5,000 in unemployment insurance benefits that he had been waiting on for months as Virginia wrangled an antiquated unemployment system.

“Having this is better than nothing,” Knotts said. “I am grateful and feel relieved.”

Knotts, who worked as a business analyst at the Department of Veterans Affairs, is among some 41,000 people potentially eligible for Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation. This federally funded program extends unemployment insurance by 13 weeks for people who exhausted their benefits. People receiving PEUC are also eligible for an additional $600 a week.

The Virginia Employment Commission announced Thursday that it had paid roughly 12,000 PEUC claims worth $10 million in benefits. These were the first payments made after the commission opened a portal on July 2.

Knotts and his wife Kim were desperate for help. She had lost her work as a nanny during the pandemic. For some measure of relief, Kim applied for unemployment benefits in Ohio and began receiving payments. Knotts had received previous unemployment benefits in Virginia, so he would need to wait until the state set up a way to pay out the federal benefits. Knotts said there was no place on the Virginia Employment Commission’s website to apply for PEUC, but the agency managed to get a letter to him in Ohio.

“I received something in the mail, I want to say it was in May, stating that I was eligible for the PEUC,” he said. “But as far as any further directions, the piece of mail that I received didn’t provide anything.”

Both Maryland and Washington, D.C. began paying PEUC before Virginia, said Michele Evermore, senior researcher and policy analyst at the National Employment Law Project. But several other states have still not reported paying PEUC, including Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, New Hampshire, Oregon and Wyoming.

One reason for Virginia’s lag is that the commission’s system dates back to 1985 and needed to be updated, said Joyce Fogg, communications manager for the Virginia Employment Commission. The delay exasperated Virginia’s unemployed and its leaders. Sen. Tim Kaine (D) said in June that it was “not acceptable.”

“We provided resources to enable them to do it and I’m having trouble figuring out why the 13-week extension is the one that has been the hardest to administer,” Kaine said.

PEUC payments are only one piece of federal support for the unemployed. Those receiving unemployment insurance of any kind will continue to collect $600 a week until late July. The federal CARES Act also created Pandemic Unemployment Assistance that provides benefits to gig workers, self-employed workers and others who don’t qualify for traditional benefits.

Between the three programs, about 700,000 Virginians are eligible for some kind of unemployment assistance, Evermore said.

PEUC is available to people whose benefit year ended on or after July 6, 2019, and payments are available through the end of 2020. Knotts said he received $5012.50, which accounts for roughly half of what he is entitled to. He says he emailed the commission and was told the shortfall was due to a glitch, and he expects to eventually receive the rest.

Prior to the pandemic, Knotts said he and his wife planned to move from Virginia to North Carolina, where housing is cheaper. Scraping by on delayed unemployment benefits did little to change his mind, and he plans to use the benefits to prepare for eventually relocating to Charlotte, N.C.

“I love the D.C. area in Virginia,” he said. “Career-wise, it’s an awesome place to live. But it was the cost of housing that got me thinking of relocating to a place with a better cost of living and a great job market.”