This is starting to appear in more and more states…

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New York state’s systems for filing unemployment insurance claims crashed Tuesday, yet another sign of the deepening a recession.

The state Department of Labor, which oversees unemployment insurance claims, received more than 10,000 phone calls an hour on a toll-free hotline Tuesday, leading to the crash. The department’s online claim filing system also shut down under the volume of traffic it received.

The unemployment claims systems in Ohio and other states buckled this week under an onslaught of telephone calls and Web site hits, officials said Tuesday.

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The Ohio Department of Job and Family Services said its phone hotline was back up and running after callers were unable to get through beginning Monday. Spokeswoman Traci Bell-Thomas said the section of the state’s Web site that enables people to make claims online remained down.

“With the numbers of people being laid off at end of the year, the systems are just being overwhelmed,” Bell-Thomas said.

The telephone hot line generally receives about 7,500 calls a day, but has been getting about 80,000 each of the past two days.

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MUSKEGON HEIGHTS, Mich. (WZZM) – Michigan’s high unemployment rate means more claims and it’s causing problems at the Michigan Unemployment Insurance Agency. The phone lines are clogged and some say the internet isn’t much help either.

At the Michigan Works office in Muskegon Heights, workers have been told the wait can take hours or even days to register for benefits.

The biggest complaint seems to be the toll-free number that people have to call to register. The number is constantly busy.

Brenda Baushke was recently laid-off and says she tried for two days to register for benefits. “It’s just frustrating; you don’t want to leave the house, because you want to get through. Because you want to get started, because your bills are due.”

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