For several months now, due to what state Labor Director Anne Perreira-Eustaquio this week described as an “enormous call volume flooding our offices,” callers with questions about unemployment insurance claims have been frequently greeted by a recorded message rather than a human voice.

Let’s hope that the launch of a virtual unemployment insurance call center — staffed with some 200 trained operators and paid for with $4.9 million in federal coronavirus relief funds — will significantly step up the human-to-human connection needed to address queries about all types of claims, 833-901-2272 and 833-901-2275.