Florida Jobless Claims Remain Steady

TALLAHASSEE (CBSMiami/NSF) - Florida continues to see relatively little change in new unemployment claims, with the U.S. Department of Labor estimating Thursday that the state had 6,845 initial claims during the week that ended Sept. 18.

The estimate was down from a revised count of 7,761 for the week ending Sept. 11 and similar to the average of 7,889 claims a week since mid-May.

Before the revision, the federal agency estimated that 6,817 new claims had been filed during the week that ended Sept. 11. The recent numbers remain far below the surge in claims last year after the COVID-19 pandemic caused massive economic upheaval.

From mid-March 2020 to mid-June 2020, Florida averaged just over 215,000 new claims a week. Last week, the state Department of Economic Opportunity said Florida had a 5.0 percent unemployment rate in August, down from 5.1 percent in July.

The August rate reflected 529,000 people qualified as being unemployed from a workforce of 10.54 million. The national unemployment rate was 5.2 percent in August.

An estimated 351,000 new claims were filed nationally last week, up 16,000 from the prior week. Over the past four weeks, the average number of new weekly claims stands at 335,750.