ALBANY — State officials believe roughly 90,000 out-of-work New Yorkers may have missed a critical step needed for them to receive unemployment benefits.
The state Department of Labor, flooded with millions of claims since the coronavirus pandemic began, launched a new program on Monday designed to inform people who have successfully applied for benefits that they failed to submit a weekly certification to receive payments.
“We know the end of this process is not having your application approved, it’s actually receiving your funds every week,” Labor Commissioner Roberta Reardon said during a briefing call with reporters. “We’re taking proactive measures to let New Yorkers know when and how to submit these certifications so they can receive their benefits faster.”
The state emailed 90,000 people over the weekend to let them know that in addition to applying for unemployment, federal law requires them to submit a certification every week to receive their benefits.
The weekly check-in is something most new filiers are unfamiliar with, Reardon said, but it’s needed to confirm that an applicant meets all the conditions for receiving benefits, including that they were unemployed for all or part of the past week and are “ready, willing and able to work.”
Reardon said that so far the state has paid out $4.6 billion to more than 1.6 million out of work New Yorkers since March 9 as the state became the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak.
The state system nearly collapsed under the wave of unemployment applications that followed strict stay-at-home orders that shuttered businesses and stalled the economy.
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.
Last month, the state attempted to streamline coronavirus-related unemployment applications amid the unprecedented surge.
A new system was introduced about two weeks ago that removed a step that had held up help for thousands of New Yorkers waiting for financial relief and allows people to file directly for federally backed Pandemic Unemployment Assistance.
That means those who are self-employed, independent contractors, gig workers, farmers, people with COVID-19 or caring for a family member with the virus no longer have to apply for standard unemployment insurance, get rejected and then reapply for the coronavirus-specific benefits.
