Heavy filings for jobless benefits crash system

[dcsmart]

In “Talkin’ ’Bout a Revolution,” Tracy Chapman sang about “wasting time on the unemployment lines.”

Twenty years later, high-tech—while a contributing factor to unemployment—has made standing in line a thing of the past. States have cut intake workers and closed neighborhood unemployment offices. Now a newly laid-off worker must call a processing center or file online.

In the first week of January, as the number of workers filing new claims reached a 26-year high and the U.S. unemployment rate climbed to 7.2 percent, the job center computer systems in New York, North Carolina and Ohio crashed.

All 50 states reported being overwhelmed by the volume of calls: 10,000 per hour in New York, 2 million per day in California, doubling of the number of claims in Kentucky, tripling in North Carolina, and so on. “Be prepared to wait and just hang on. Try not to get frustrated,” urged Howard Cosgrove, spokesperson for the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development. (Associated Press, Jan. 6)
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FULL ARTICLE
http://www.workers.org/2009/us/jobless_benefits_0122/