NYS Unemployment Claim 2025

 Job ends on Friday, file the claim on Monday.

Got the message that you need to call the Claims hotline to finish the claim, to speak with a claims specialist.

It's an automated system where you have to go through lots of prerecorded messages -- and you'll often go through over a minute of prompts before getting a message saying that all claims specialists are busy and you need to call back later.

To make that easier, you can autodial through the prompts.

You're basically just putting pauses and numbers into the phone number you've got for the hotline.

Commas - "," - serve as pauses. Each comma pauses about 2 seconds.

Jot down all the numbers you're using to navigate through the menus. Insert commas by estimating at first -- you're basically just trying this a few times to refine things. I haven't found it too difficult to refine your autodial to zip through the menus. Note that you can interrupt many of the prompts.

"Please enter your five digit--" You can key in the number before the full message plays.

It's a grind but being able to autodial through the menus makes it easier, because you'll likely have to call a number of times before you can actually get through to someone.

I think it might be easier to get through later in the week. Posting this on a Tuesday. I started dialing as soon as the hotline opened at 8am, and it was immediately slammed. I'm running through this a bunch of times just to see if I can get lucky, but the last time I did this (over a year ago), I managed to get through on a Friday morning.

Monday was a holiday, so I tried calling Tuesday morning (right at 8am when the hotline opened). Tried for about half an hour to an hour, didn't get through. (Tried a few times throughout the day, too.)

Wednesday morning, dialed right at 8am with my pre-programmed autodial and got through on the first try! Waited a bit and before I got to my claims specialist who took some more information and got my claim moving ahead.

Next step, go online next Wednesday and claim initial benefits for this claim. After that, it's every Sunday like clockwork until I'm employed again.