Nearly everyone who interacts with New York’s decades-old unemployment benefits system agrees it’s in need of a major makeover.
That’s why advocates for those receiving benefits are largely pleased that the state Department of Labor is beginning an overhaul of the system on Monday. It’s a painstaking process that will require the state to migrate more than 5 billion business records to a new apparatus in a move that promises to make the byzantine apparatus more user-friendly.
But the massive changeover comes with a major snag: The state will shut down the entire unemployment system for several days. It’s a dramatic move that means tens of thousands of people could see their payments delayed for at least a week…