$10 Billion In Unemployment Benefits Paid To New Yorkers

The State Department of Labor says the backlog of pending unemployment benefits has been reduced to just over 7,500.

Officials say most of the unprocessed applications are missing critical information and cannot be processed.

The numbers for applications submitted pre-4/22 are as follows:

• 1,194,933: Paid
• 20,801: Not Paid - Need Certification
• 7,580: Not Paid - Partial Claims missing Information Needed to Process

More than 2 million unemployment benefit applications have been processed and New Yorkers have received over $10 million in benefits during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"No one could have predicted the wave of unemployment applications that crashed over the United States because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and every state is struggling — but New York has moved faster than any other state to address our backlog and get money into New Yorkers' hands. To date, we have paid out over $10 billion dollars during this crisis, compared to just $2.1 billion in total last year," said NYS Labor Commissioner Roberta Reardon.

The Department of Labor has also launched a new system that proactively and directly communicates the status of an individual's unemployment insurance application via text and email.