Florida COVID-19 jobless claims grow by 160K

There were 160,000 additional unemployment claims in the in the past week as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to grip the state, according to Florida Department of Economic Opportunity data released this week.

Total unemployment claims jumped to 3.34 million since the coronavirus outbreak began in March. That’s up from 3.18 million the previous week.

The latest figures reflect a slowing trend for July, as opposed to prior months when upwards of 500,000 claims were sometimes filed per week.

There were 3.14 million total confirmed unique jobless claims in Florida in the past week, meaning there were no duplicate filings. Of those, about 3.06 million claims have been processed, which is about 97%.

Some 1.87 million Floridians are now eligible for state or federal unemployment benefits. That’s up from 1.82 million a week ago. About 1.27 million are eligible for state reemployment assistance, a surprising drop from last week’s 1.3 million. Another 261,185 are eligible federal pandemic emergency unemployment compensation and another 333,179 are eligible for federal pandemic unemployment assistance. Some 598,517 Floridians are not eligible for state or federal reemployment assistance.

Another 1.8 million claims have been paid in Florida, that’s 96% of eligible claims and up from 1.75 million last week.

In all, $11.95 billion has been paid to unemployment claimants in Florida, with $8.75 billion coming from federal pandemic unemployment compensation. Another $381.28 million has come from federal pandemic unemployment assistance and $209.14 million from federal pandemic emergency unemployment compensation.

Florida has paid out about $2.6 billion since the pandemic began. That’s up about $200 million from last week.