Ouch! This is bad news any way you look at it
If you lost your job recently, or know somebody who did, you’re probably already aware of the backed-up mess for N.Y. unemployment claims. Since 2005, the only way to apply for unemployment on N.Y. is online or on the phone, and the system has been overwhelmed for weeks. It’s been common to hear stories of people spending all day, or even more than a day, trying to initiate their benefits.
Things came to head earlier this week and the system crashed on Monday, and then again on Tuesday.
The system, which serves as the gateway to unemployment benefits for New York residents, could not handle the volume of calls and online inquiries it was receiving, said Leo Rosales, a spokesman for the department. As many as 10,000 people an hour tried to log into the system to file new unemployment claims or to check on existing claims, Mr. Rosales said.
“It is really unprecedented, the number of calls we’re getting per hour,” Mr. Rosales said. He attributed the unusually heavy volume to the confluence of “the high unemployment rate, the time of the week, the time of the year and the high number of new claims.”
It’s not as if they weren’t gearing up to meet the demand (emphasis mine).
In early December, the state Labor Department doubled its staff of representatives who field calls about unemployment benefits and extended their working hours in response to growing wait times on the phone lines, Mr. Rosales said.
“We’ve been experiencing high call volumes for several months,” Mr. Rosales said. “There was a long wait time for callers. We had a lot of complaints. People were upset.”
Meanwhile, the number of job listings in the Rochester region plummeted.
Some 10,200 online job ads were posted here in December, down from 13,500 in November and 11,000 a year ago. It was the fourth consecutive month of help-wanted advertising declines locally. New, unduplicated ads also fell in December to 6,200 from 8,800 in November and 7,300 a year ago.
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