State officials today blamed the bank that processes unemployment payments for holding up payouts of $300 in federal pandemic assistance to more than 2 million New Yorkers.
The Department of Labor said this morning that it had processed more than $2 billion in the Lost Wages Assistance program, the $300 boost to standard unemployment that President Donald Trump approved by executive order earlier in the summer summer. For some, the money didn't arrive as promised today—leading frustrated New Yorkers to flood the department's social media channels.
The state said a hitch at KeyBank held up the funds.
"Despite assurances their system could handle the load, KeyBank was unable to process payments overnight," the Labor Department wrote in a message on Twitter. The state said all eligible New Yorkers should receive the payments by 4:30 p.m. today.
"Every vendor who works with the DOL has a responsibility to get New Yorkers their benefits as quickly as possible—which KeyBank failed to do," the post added.
The payments are in addition to standard weekly unemployment pay and retroactive to when the federal program started. The first round of payments, due today, provides $300 each for the weeks of Aug. 2, 9 and 16. The second round of payments—covering the weeks of Aug. 23 and 30 and Sept. 6—will be deposited next week.
KeyBank quickly published a response to the state, apologizing for an error it said delayed processing the payments for three hours last night.
"We understand how critical these additional funds are and apologize for the inconvenience and unneeded stress this error has caused," the bank's statement reads. "We are reviewing our processes and systems to ensure future LWA payments are processed correctly and delivered on time."
More than 2.7 million New Yorkers received some type of unemployment aid as of last week, according to federal data.
While the Labor Department has paid more than $44 billion in unemployment insurance since March—21 years' worth of typical payments, by the state's calculation—the process has faced a range of technical issues. New York state partnered with Google in April to launch an unemployment application website after the old one crashed under a historic flood of claims. The backlog of unprocessed claims hit a high of about 275,000 that month.
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September 19, 2020 at 01:47AM
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State blames KeyBank for holding up $300 federal aid payments - Crain's New York Business
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