Looking to cut through the red tape, the New York State Department of Labor is starting what Commissioner Roberta Reardon terms a “streamlined process” to allow those who missed unemployment benefits because the certification process was not completed.
Reardon, addressing the news media by telephone this afternoon, said the agency is taking steps to get benefits to nearly a half million New York residents who failed to submit the federally mandated certifications along with the applications.
“Today, I am announcing that we will be launching a streamlined process for New Yorkers to submit previous week certifications online,” she said. “As part of this new process, we will directly email New Yorkers with missing certification from previous weeks to inform them of the situation and we will include in that email a secure form that they can use to submit their information – which we will verify, process and pay.”
The commissioner said the DOL has identified more than 470,000 New Yorkers with “completed, processed and payable unemployment benefit applications who did not submit certifications in previous weeks, effectively leaving their money on the table.”
This amounted to more than 697,000 missed certifications, she said, that, if received, would have totaled approximately $480 million in benefits.
“No one should miss out on their benefits because of red tape, including these federally mandated weekly certifications,” she said.
Reardon said the agency previously emailed 90,000 New Yorkers who had completed and processed claims but did not received funds due to an accompanying certification. Those with no email address would receive a phone call or, as a last resort, a letter in the mail.
She said that going forward, the fastest way to file is online by going to www.labor.ny.gov/signin.
Reardon also said the DOL will be releasing a “fact sheet” to inform people of their claim status.
“Many people have seen 'pending' as their status for far too long and I understand the anxiety that this can cause,” she said. “When you don’t know where you are in the process or why you are there, you feel powerless. This new resource will outline the main reasons why someone’s claim may be pending, so you can have a better sense of the work we are doing to process your application.”
Statistically, more than 30 million Americans have filed for unemployment insurance since the COVID-19 crisis began, including 1.6 million New Yorkers, Reardon said. As of today, the NYS DOL has paid $5.8 billion in unemployment benefits as a result of the pandemic.
“For context, we paid out $2.14 billion in unemployment benefits during the entirety of 2019,” she said. “That means in just two months we have paid out nearly three times the total level of benefits that we paid all last year.”
