The New York State Department of Labor for the first time has put a number of the backlog of pending unemployment benefits caused by COVID-19, and they say that number is now down to less than 76-hundred.
The department says it's been able to process more than two million applications after an overhaul of its systems and hiring more workers. They were hit by an unprecedented flood of applications from people who lost their jobs due to the coronavirus shutdown beginning in March. The department says it has 7,580 applications it hasn't been able to process, either because they're missing critical information or were duplicates or abandoned claims.
More than 10-billion dollars in benefits have been paid out since March.