Florida’s new weekly jobless claims drop for second straight week

Everyone’s hiring. Image via AP.

The number of weekly first-time unemployment claims decreased for the second week in a row in Florida for the week ending May 25, according to new U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) data.

There were 6,113 initial claims for unemployment insurance benefits last week in the Sunshine State. That’s a weekly drop of 499 claims. It’s also the second week in a row that first-time jobless claims in Florida decreased, according to data that is not seasonally adjusted.

Florida is still trying to rebound from a notable jump in the initial unemployment claims that was seen for the week ending May 11. That’s when first-time jobless filings shot up to 7,051, a substantial spike from the week ending May 4, when initial unemployment claims settled at 5,893 after declining for several weeks.

While the past two weeks have seen falling first-time jobless claims, Florida has not been able to get to that lower level reported by the DOL in the beginning of this month.

The Florida trends also cut against the past week’s national figures, which saw an increase in seasonally unadjusted initial unemployment claims across America. The U.S. saw first-time unemployment claims jump to 195,615 filings for the week ending May 25. That’s a 1.5% increase, or an increase of 2,898 new claims, over the period of new filings ending on May 18. That’s a notable change from the previous week, when the national figure dropped by 6.3%.

Florida’s weekly new jobless claims generally have been sliding in the past two months, and the trend reflects a relatively stable unemployment picture in the state. The unemployment rate for Florida, released monthly, has remained mostly unchanged for the past three months.

The latest monthly jobless figure for Florida came in at 3.3% in April when the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity released those numbers last week. That reflected an increase of 0.1 percentage points over the March jobless rate, which saw the same increase over February’s total unemployment rate of 3.2%. February’s jobless figure was unchanged from January.

Florida also has maintained an unemployment rate that has been lower than the national figure for 42 consecutive months. The U.S. unemployment rate for April was 3.9%.