Florida sees 90,000 new weekly unemployment claims, lowest in months

The number of Florida’s weekly unemployment filings dropped below 100,000 for the first time since nearly the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak in March, according to Florida Department of Economic Opportunity data released this week.

There were 3.53 million total jobless filings recorded since the pandemic hit the state, up about 90,000 over last week. That’s the lowest weekly increase not only in the past two months but since the early phases of the crisis.

June and July had seen unemployment applications range in weekly increases of just more than 100,000 to about 400,000. Unemployment filings were at their highest in March and April.

Of Florida’s total unemployment claims, 3.34 million have been confirmed unique cases, meaning there were no duplicates.

Another 3.27 million claims have been processed, about 97.6% of unique claims submitted.

About 1.94 million Floridians are now eligible for state reemployment assistance, federal pandemic emergency unemployment compensation or federal pandemic unemployment assistance.  That’s up from 1.91 million a week ago. About 1.25 million are eligible for state reemployment assistance, about 342,306 are eligible for federal pandemic emergency unemployment compensation and another 344,000 are eligible for pandemic unemployment assistance. About 638,000 Floridians are ineligible for state and federal reemployment assistance.

There have now been 1.85 million total jobless claims paid in Florida, or about 95.5% of eligible claims.

In all, $13.42 billion has been paid to unemployment claimants in the state with $9.78 billion coming from federal pandemic unemployment compensation, another $453.1 million coming from federal pandemic unemployment assistance and $362.86 million coming from federal pandemic emergency unemployment compensation.

Florida has paid out about $2.82 billion since the onset of the pandemic. That’s up about $111 million from the previous week.