Florida new unemployment down last week to fewer than 7,500

Initial unemployment claims dropped by more than 1,000 for the week ending June 14 in Florida.

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) reports there were 7,415 first-time jobless filings last week, down by 1,371 claims from the 8,785 for the week ending June 7. The previous week’s number was the single largest increase in those claims this year and the first time in 2025 new filings exceeded 8,000.

While the latest number of new claims fell significantly in the past week, the number of initial filings for all of Florida is still unusually high for this year, as few weeks have broken the 7,000 threshold. The majority of weeks have seen new unemployment claims decrease and many weeks have had fewer than 6,000 initial filings.

The decrease in weekly jobless insurance benefits claims is reflective of national trends. DOL data show there were 235,709 initial unemployment claims across the country last week. That’s down 10,160, or a 4.1% drop.

That’s a bigger decrease than what was expected. DOL analysts had projected a weekly decrease of 5,991 or a 2.4% dip. While the weekly figures declined, the year-over-year comparison was not as positive. There were 227,980 new unemployment claims across the country for the comparable week in 2024.

Nationally, the first-time unemployment claims have been generally on the increase for the past month.

“The 4-week moving average was 245,500, an increase of 4,750 from the previous week’s revised average. This is the highest level for this average since August 19, 2023 when it was 246,000. The previous week’s average was revised up by 500 from 240,250 to 240,750,” the DOL report said.

Florida’s general unemployment rate has been increasing this year. The April figure stands at 3.7% and FloridaCommerce, the state jobs and business development division, is expected to release the latest unemployment data for May within days.

The April figure is an increase over March’s rate of 3.6%, which held steady from February.

While Florida’s unemployment has been increasing this year, it still remains lower than the national figure of 4.2%, and Florida has had a lower rate than the national rate for 54 months in a row.