With thousands of people thrown out of work when Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered a shutdown to limit the Covid-19 epidemic, the state Labor Department’s website has been overwhelmed.
Between March 23 – 28, the department got 3.4 million hits on its site for online unemployment filing, WNBC-TV reported. That compared to 350,000 in a typical week, for an increase in web traffic of nearly 900%. In that same period it took more than, 8.2 million calls a 16,000% increase from the weekly average of 50,000 calls.
In response, the DOL has put together this public service announcement to help New Yorkers file for unemployment.