Gov. Andrew Cuomo says he knows many New Yorkers are trying to get through to the state’s website and phone lines to apply for unemployment, and are facing long waits and crashing systems.
He says the Labor Department normally gets 50,000 calls regarding unemployment a week, now it is getting over 1 million calls a day -- 1.2 million on Monday and 7.8 million over the past week.
“It’s not working as smoothly as I would like to see it,” said Cuomo, who added the state is working with “literally hundreds” of tech experts to try to fix it. “It’s compounding people’s stress.
“I apologize for the pain,” he said. “It must be infuriating to deal with.”
Cuomo said once people get through and get signed up, they will get their benefits retroactively, to the date that they lost their jobs.
