Drew Dixon
Florida’s unemployment picture finished August on a high note with yet another drop in new filings.
The latest U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) numbers show there were 5,576 first-time unemployment filings in the Sunshine State for the week ending Aug. 30. That’s down by 601 filings from the week ending Aug. 23 when there were 6,177 claims, after seasonal adjustments.
The latest DOL report accounts for the seventh week in a row that Florida has seen a decrease in claims. It’s a long stretch that counters the initial weeks of Summer when the weekly filings were volatile.
The latest drop in Florida is also one of the more significant declines in recent weeks. Even though the state is on a seven-week streak of declining filings, no other week in August recorded a drop of more than 600 filings.
Florida also cut against the grain of the latest national jobless figures. Across America, there were 196,999 claims for the week ending Aug. 30. That’s up by 5,791 filings from the previous week, or a 3% uptick.
That figure also contradicts what DOL analysts had projected for the week. Economists had expected a decrease in the new claims across the county by 687 filings, which would have been a modest 0.4% drop.
The number of the latest jobless claims also represents a jump in the year-over-year comparison. There were 190,631 filings in the same comparable week in 2024, that’s more than 6,000 less than the latest report on the national level.
Florida has remained relatively stable not only in new filings, but in the broader unemployment picture as well. The jobless rate has held steady for four straight months. The July figure was 3.7%, according to FloridaCommerce, the state’s economic development bureau. That office is scheduled to publish the August unemployment rate in about two weeks.
Compared to national figures, Florida is doing well and has remained below the American rate for 57 straight months. The national figure is 4.2%.
