Drew Dixon
The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) reports there was a decrease in new unemployment claims in Florida for the week ending May 17.
The drop comes after two straight weeks of rising claims, though those increases were modest.
There were 5,976 new filings for jobless benefits last week. That’s down by 748 from the week ending May 10, when there were 6,724 claims after seasonal adjustments.
The decline in first-time jobless claims in Florida was in line with the national trend. DOL says there were 202,088 filings across the county for the week ending May 17. It’s a modest week-to-week decrease of 3,635 claims, or a 1.8% drop. It is a bigger decline, though, than DOL analysts had projected. Those experts foresaw a drop of 1,147 filings, or a 0.6% drop.
The number of claims nationwide did increase in the year-over-year comparison. For the approximate same week in 2024, there were 192,717 filings.
The latest decrease in new unemployment claims comes on the heels of the FloridaCommerce unemployment rate report showing an uptick in April. The unemployment rate was 3.7% for last month, an increase from 3.6%, which was the jobless rate for February and March. That’s also an increase in the year-over-year comparison, as April 2024’s unemployment figure was 3.2%.
There have been three increases in the jobless rate in Florida this year. Still, the Sunshine State has a lower unemployment rate than the national figure, which stands at 4.2%. Florida has had a lower unemployment rate than the national figure for 54 months in a row.
In April, there were 410,000 unemployed Floridians last month out of a workforce of 11.2 million people, after seasonal adjustments. The labor force figure is a new high for the state. FloridaCommerce officials attribute that to an addition of 3.6 million new businesses since 2019.
South Florida had the strongest showing in jobless figures for April. Monroe County had the lowest unemployment rate, at 2.4%, followed closely by Miami-Dade County, which registered a 2.7% jobless rate.
