Drew Dixon
Florida unemployment claims rose to 3.44 million in the past week, up about 100,000 over the past week, according to the Department of Economic Opportunity.
That’s a slow down in the number from last week’s claims and is the lowest weekly increase in about a month. The previous week added 160,000 claims for a total of 3.34 million total requests for unemployment assistance since the pandemic began in March. In the early months of the pandemic there were sometimes 500,000 additional unemployment claims per week.
Still, there were a total of 3.26 million unique jobless claims in the state as of Sunday. Of those, 3.18 million claims have been processed, which is about 97.6%.
About 1.91 million Floridians are now eligible for state reemployment assistance, federal pandemic emergency unemployment compensation or federal pandemic unemployment assistance. That’s up from 1.87 million a week ago. About 1.26 million are eligible for state assistance, down by about 10,000 from the previous week. Another 310,359 are eligible for federal pandemic emergency unemployment compensation and another 345,150 are eligible for federal pandemic unemployment assistance. Another 617,513 Floridians are not eligible for any of the state or federal assistance.
Another 1.82 million claims have been paid in Florida. That’s about 95.3%.
In all, $12.82 billion has been paid to unemployment claimants in Florida with $9.4 billion coming from federal pandemic unemployment compensation, $416.34 million from federal pandemic unemployment assistance and $283.85 million from federal pandemic emergency unemployment compensation.
Florida has paid out about $2.71 billion since the onset of the pandemic. That’s up about $110 million from the previous week.
