Drew Dixon
The number of Florida unemployment claims dropped in the third week of April, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
There were 6,068 initial unemployment claims filed for the week ending April 20 in the Sunshine State. That’s down 147 over the previous week when there were 6,215 jobless claims in Florida.
For the week ending April 20, Florida followed the national trend of decreasing first-time unemployment claims, with 207,000 first-time unemployment claims filed across the U.S. That was a decrease of about 5,000 filings from the previous week.
There were 213,250 first-time unemployment claims nationally over the past four weeks, down about 1,250 per week, according to the labor department.
Monthly, Florida’s jobless claims increased slightly in March. The Florida Department of Economic Opportunity published the March unemployment rate in the middle of April, showing a 3.2% jobless rate for last month. That was a 0.1% increase from the unemployment rate in February.
Year-over-year, unemployment is up 0.4%.
The Florida monthly unemployment rate was lower than the national rate of 3.8% in March.
