Are Florida’s job gains stalling? New state unemployment assistance claims rise by 4,700
Florida’s breakneck economic gains amid an aggressive reopening may be stalling, as new applications for unemployment assistance climbed for the second time in three weeks, the U.S. Department of Labor reported Thursday.
For the week ending April 24, new unemployment claims climbed from 18,838 to 23,600. While that remains well below the highs seen at the outset of the pandemic, it is nearly five times above pre-pandemic levels.
Florida’s count of insured unemployment, or among those filing at least two consecutive weeks, fell from 123,557 to 119,947 on the week. While that figure has now declined for four consecutive weeks, it is above the low seen the week ending March 27 of 116,512.
“Continuing claims are still higher now than they were at any time between November 2011 and February 2020, so this is still a very serious level of economic stress,” Andrew Stettner, senior fellow at The Century Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank, said in an email.
The number of Florida workers accepting federal pandemic unemployment assistance because they don’t qualify for regular state assistance climbed from 1,886 to 2,025 last week.
Nationally, new jobless assistance filings fell 13,000, to 553,000. More than 16 million Americans remain out of work.
“We’ve had one great jobs report; it’s not enough,” Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said Tuesday, referring to March data showing the U.S. added a million jobs. “We’re going to act on actual data, not our forecast. ... We’re a long way from our goals.”
The Fed is continuing to hold record-low interest rates steady.
More than two million workers — about one in 10 Floridians — have filed for unemployment at some point during the pandemic, according to state data.
This story was originally published April 29, 2021 at 9:17 AM.
