There was a steep drop in the number of fresh unemployment applicants for the most recent week in Florida, signaling that the crushing waves might be subsiding.
In the week ending last Saturday, Florida saw 173,191 new unemployment claims, according to the latest weekly report from the U.S. Department of Labor.
That’s still way above the typical week’s worth of claims Florida had prior to the start of the coronavirus economic crisis in mid-March. But it’s also a dramatic fall from the numbers of newly-unemployed Floridians who showed up in the Department of Labor’s previous two weekly report, 433,103 (adjusted slightly from initial reports) for the week ending April 25, and 506,670 for the week ending April 17.
For the week of April 25, Florida had the nation’s highest total of new unemployment compensation applicants, and the week before Florida had the second-highest total. That was seen in part as the result of a big backlog of claims finally punching through, after more than a month of delays Floridians suffered while trying to file claims through the state’s troublesome CONNECT system.
For the most recent week, Florida’s total new claims ranked just fifth nationally, behind California, Texas, Georgia, and New York.
Nearly 1.8 million Floridians have filed for unemployment since the start of the coronavirus economic crisis in mid-March, according to the federal agency’s accounting.
The federal figure is, at last, on par with what the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity reports. Through Tuesday, the state agency has seen just over 1.8 million applications in “total claims submitted,” though that includes an unknown number of duplicate claims filed by frustrated Floridians who applied more than once.
Through Tuesday, the DEO had processed about 770,000 of those claims and approved unemployment compensation for 481,497 Floridians.
Nationally, the Department of Labor reported it had logged 3,169,000 new unemployment claims for the week ending last Saturday, a decrease of 677,000 from the previous week’s revised level.
Since mid-March, 33.5 million Americans have filed new claims for unemployment compensation, according to the Department of Labor’s reports.
