New York unemployment system crashed
THE STATE of New York's computer system that processes its unemployment insurance claims crashed under tidal waves of demand on Monday afternoon and for several hours on Tuesday, overwhelmed by online and phone traffic from thousands of jobless workers.
Leo Rosales, a state Department of Labor spokesman, said the system buckled under the workload as up to 10,000 people per hour attempted to file new claims or check on their existing claims.
"It is really unprecedented, the number of calls we're getting per hour," Mr Rosales said, blaming the sudden spike in traffic on "the high unemployment rate, the time of the week, the time of the year and the high number of new claims."
The New York Times reported that, in the week that ended on Boxing Day, 30,161 laid-off workers filed new unemployment benefits claims, up more than 32 per cent over the same week in 2007, and that the number of first-time claims averaged more than 30,000 in each of the prior few weeks. Economists expect the rate of US layoffs to increase in early 2009.
The state Department of Labor had doubled its call center staffing and extended working hours in December to cope with the increased volume of new unemployment claims. The affected computer system was brought back up successfully at about midday on Tuesday. µ
L'Inq
New York Times
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There was an article in the newspaper yesterday about North Carolina's unemployment processing system crashing as well due to overwhelming applications. I dread seeing the next unemployment figures reported by the govenment
The Gov't will spin the numbers...they'll find ways of not accounting for some people....
Heard on the news this morning that Ohio's unemployment computer system also crashed yesterday, it's back up now. Also the phone system caved in temporarily. Yeah, this bodes well.
So the problem seems to be under staffing at the unemployment office.
Seems if the un-imp-deployment office were to hire...something like 30,161 people, that ought to do it. They'd be able to handle almost all of the claims that are bound to come in...soon.
oh wait. Don't want to give anyone the false impression that I give a sh$t.
Or that, at the rate the gov't is printing money, that the un-imp-deployment benefits would be worth anymore than say toilet paper.
I know how we can get all our minds off all this gloom and doom, lets sign into law another spending package. That always cheers people up.
So scary to think about the amount of unemployed out there!
I found it really useful to do temp work in between jobs and picking up freelance and bartending gigs.. it helps to keep you busy and pass the time
Check out http://www.YAAZE.com.. you can create a profile with resume/ portfolio/ skills and help employers in your area find you easily!!