Cost of pandemic-related unemployment in Florida tops $19 billion

The cost of helping Florida’s workforce recover from the coronavirus outbreak has now exceeded $19 billion, according to Florida Department of Economic Opportunity data released this week.

Most of that has come from federal dollars.

The federal pandemic unemployment compensation and lost wage assistance program has paid for about $12.27 billion of the cost. The federal pandemic emergency unemployment compensation program has accounted for another $1.69 billion and the federal pandemic unemployment assistance program has picked up $1.49 billion of that tab.

Florida is footing part of the bill for pandemic relief for workers in the state. The state’s reemployment assistance program has paid for $3.74 billion in relief.

There were 69,000 new applications for pandemic-related unemployment assistance in the past week.

There have been 4.84 million jobless claims filed with the state since the coronavirus outbreak began in March. That’s up from last week’s figure of 4.771 million. The first week of December saw 55,000 new pandemic-related unemployment claims, the fewest since the beginning of the crisis.

This week’s increase is still less than many weeks during the peak of the pandemic in spring months and into summer when there were as many as 500,000 people per week seeking jobless help in Florida due to the outbreak. The most recent jobless claims are also down from October when those numbers started to surge again, even reaching 108,000 in one week in that month.

There are now 4.64 million unique claims for pandemic-related unemployment help in Florida, meaning they are not duplicates. A total of 4.53 million claims have been processed, which is about 10% of the unique claims.

Another 2.13 million claims have been paid, which is about 98% of the eligible claims.