Drew Dixon
Coronavirus-related unemployment claims have decreased again in the past week, according to Florida Department of Economic Opportunity data released this week.
There were 74,000 new claims for unemployment due to the pandemic in Florida in the past week for a total of 4.574 million filings since the COVID-19 outbreak gripped the state in March.
That latest numbers demonstrate another drop in recent weeks. That state tallied 77,000 new claims the week prior.
In early October, the number of new claims spiked to 108,000 in one week, which bucked summer trends when new claims were dropping.
Still, while the past month has seen a steady decline in new coronavirus-related jobless claims, the figures are nowhere near the system-crippling claims in the early stages of the pandemic. In the first few months, there were weeks where as many as 500,000 new claims were filed in one week as the outbreak forced businesses to lay off workers or shut down permanently.
Of this week’s claims, 4.419 million of those jobless claims are unique, meaning they are not duplicates. There have been 4.341 million total claims processed, 99.1% of all unique claims filed since the outbreak began.
Another 2.09 million claims have been paid. That amounts to 97.4% of all eligible claims.
The unemployment price tag now amounts to $18.32 billion.
Of that, $12.021 billion has come from federal pandemic unemployment compensation and lost wage assistance. Another $1.504 billion has been paid through federal pandemic emergency unemployment compensation and $1.166 billion by federal pandemic unemployment assistance.
The Florida reemployment assistance program is picking up $3.628 billion of that tab.
