My first unemployment payment still has not arrived after 11 years as an operations analyst

I applied for unemployment in Raleigh 18 weeks ago and the status page still says pending. Any experience at all would help. I called the state line four times and only reached a recording. What would you check first?

Thanks for writing this out. I went through something close to it 2 months ago, and it settled down once I kept a simple log of every call and form.