Google has partnered with New York state to develop an online application portal to handle the flood of sudden unemployment filings, according to the state's department of labor.
"Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, the New York State Department of Labor's unemployment insurance filing system has faced an unprecedented increase in volume — with peak weeks seeing a 16,000% increase in phone calls and a 1,600% increase in web traffic, compared to a typical week," a New York Department of Labor press release reads.
The site has been dubbed "Tech Surge" and is scheduled to open Friday morning. The site will be accessible through laptops, tablets, and smartphones, and is expected to be able to take on "high volume of uses."
The partnership between the tech giant and the Empire State comes as New York has had more than 450,000 people attempt to apply for unemployment benefits in just the past three weeks, alone.
According to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a heavy influx of jobless residents has crashed the state labor department's website and flooded its phone banks with an overload of calls.
Google also recently launched a search feature that shows links to federal unemployment sites. It plans to provide the same features for state unemployment sites, as well.
"We continue to work with local, state, and federal agencies on a number of projects to help them better serve citizens during the COVID-19 pandemic," a Google representative wrote in an email to CNBC.
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