coronavirus new york

Coronavirus News: New York reboots unemployment site to improve process

Friday, April 10, 2020

New York launches new unemployment website

Candace McCowan reports the state is hoping to improve the system

NEW YORK (WABC) -- New York state says those filing for unemployment will find the process to be much more user friendly when they go online on Friday.

Up until now, some say they've called hundreds of times and not been able to get through.

"You have millions out of work, the next shoe drop is going to be millions of people call in for unemployment benefits, crashing the system," Gov. Andrew Cuomo said.

"What happens is you go online, you fill out the application. If you fill out the application in full, you're done. If you leave any of the fields blank, what's been happening is they tell you call the system. So you call the system to follow up. That's what then caused the crash in volume and then the system goes down," Melissa DeRosa, secretary to Governor Cuomo, said.

Starting Friday morning, users in New York will find a new application online that has fewer questions created with the help of Google.

The state will call you back in 72 hours so applicants don't have to call them. The state also adding hundreds of staff to help out.

The system was overwhelmed as just this week 347,000 have filed for unemployment in New York State. That brings the total since March 14th to 800,000.

In New York they're now shutting down their website from 7 pm to 7am daily to give their website time to catch up and process all the applications.

In New Jersey, their jobless claims spiked 32 percent in the past week alone.

Governor Phil Murphy saying the influx has slowed their website and they've asked people to try using the site during non-peak hours.