Coronavirus jobless claims now top 3 million in Florida

Florida has now surpassed 3 million claims for unemployment assistance since the coronavirus outbreak began, according to Florida Department of Economic Opportunity data released this week.

There was an increase of about 221,000 new unemployment claims in the past week for a total of about 3.06 million claims since March 15. That total is up from last week’s 2.85 million total.

The increase last week is more than double the increases in the two previous weeks, which saw about 100,000 new claims each week.

There were about 2.85 million confirmed unique claims in the past week, meaning they weren’t duplicates. Of those unique jobless claims, 2.6 million have been processed, or about 91.4%.

A total of 1.75 million are eligible for state or federal unemployment assistance. That’s up from the 1.63 million who were eligible the previous week. About 1.3 million are eligible for state reemployment assistance, up by about 100,000 from a week ago.

Another 305,165 are eligible for state and federal pandemic unemployment assistance, up about 12,000 from the previous week. Another 149,263 are eligible  for federal pandemic emergency unemployment compensation, up by about 70,000. Some 546,778 Floridians are not eligible for state or federal reemployment assistance.

Another 1.69 million claims have been processed in Florida, about 96.8%.

The majority of funding for the unemployment relief continues to come from federal dollars.

In all, $10.07 billion has been paid to claimants in Florida with $7.34 billion coming from federal pandemic unemployment compensation. Another $297 million in federal dollars have gone to federal pandemic unemployment assistance and another $99.9 million in federal money has been spent on federal pandemic emergency unemployment compensation.

Florida has paid out $2.32 billion since the pandemic began. That’s up by about $320 million from the previous week.