As thousands waited in Centrelink queues around the country as pandemic shutdown measures plunged them into unemployment, almost five million calls to the agency either received a busy signal or a congestion message.
The number of Australians unemployed and receiving the JobSeeker payment has skyrocketed since COVID-19 forced the closure of restaurants, cafes, live music venues and many more businesses due to social distancing measures.
New figures released by Services Australia show how overwhelmed the phone lines were in the last few weeks of March, before the JobKeeper wage subsidy program was announced.
In the week ending March 29, the average waiting time across all Centrelink phone lines surged to 42 minutes and 3 seconds, up from 17 minutes the week before. By the end of April it was at less than 10 minutes.
More than 3.5 million calls got a busy signal in that week, while 1.34 million got a congestion message. Almost half a million calls were abandoned while waiting to speak to a service officer.
Almost 352,000 calls were answered by a Centrelink staff member - almost 50,000 more than the week before.
Around 1.6 million people are now receiving the JobSeeker payment, compared to 891,000 before COVID-19 hit the economy.
In response to the increased demand the government committed to hire an extra 5000 people to process claims for Centrelink payments, as well as seconding more than 1700 workers from other public service departments.
Staff within Services Australia were also redeployed to deal with the influx.
Centrelink also introduced an "intent to claim" function on the website, allowing people to register and wait to be called back.
The effect of the increased staff numbers can be seen in late April and early May, where 578,727 calls were answered in the week ending April 26 and 536,370 in the week ending May 3.
The Services Australia data reflects the demand felt across many channels at the end of March, with the number of busy signals on the families and parenting line increasing to three times the previous week, and the youth and students line by five times the previous week.
