US News

UNEMPLOYMENT OUTAGE

ALBANY – Department of Labor, please hold.

A rush of out-of-work New Yorkers overwhelmed the state’s unemployment system yesterday, forcing the program’s automated phone banks and Internet site to go black for six hours.

A Department of Labor spokesman blamed the breakdown on a combination of an unusually large number of callers and a programming glitch that restricted them to a handful of open lines.

“It’s the high volume of calls,” said the spokesman, Leo Rosales.

But he added, “Our system can accommodate this. It was an abnormal amount of callers trying to access a system that only had a few phone lines open at the time.”

The system was receiving calls at a rate of 10,000 an hour at about 8:30 a.m., when it collapsed.

Soon after, the unemployment insurance program’s Web site crashed, too.

Service to both outlets had been restored by 2:30 p.m. yesterday.