State update on backlog of jobless claims

ALBANY — Officials provided details about the state’s crushing backlog of unemployment claims on Monday — the first such update since the coronavirus pandemic began.

While the state has already paid out more than $9.2 billion to roughly 2 million out-ofwork New Yorkers, thousands more say have been watching their bank accounts dwindle for weeks without a word about the status of their claim.

Labor Commissioner Roberta Reardon said an analysis over the weekend revealed the state has approved 1.2 million older applications submitted between March 2 and April 22 and an additional 50,000 from that time period were processed but did not qualify for traditional state unemployment insurance. The second group is mostly people who are eligible for coronavirus-related federal benefits. There are another 16,000 older claims going through “final processing and should be payable soon” or need additional information, she said.

A total of 23,000 applications are still waiting to be processed, are missing information or are likely duplicates.

“The data is not straightforward,” Reardon cautioned, noting the state previously refused to release the number of pending claims. “As I’ve previously explained, this number can be misleading because the count of applications that have not yet been processed includes duplicates, applications that were abandoned and applications that only contain partial information,” she added.

The state unemployment system has been stretched to the point of collapse in recent weeks with millions of applications.

Thousands of people have been hired to help with the backlog created by the influx of claims, and the state even turned to Google to assist in overhauling the Labor Department website.

Many self-employed New Yorkers or those who were working freelance or gig jobs have been trapped in a hellish limbo with their claims caught up in a system unprepared for the influx.