More than 1.2 million Floridians — 13% of the state’s workforce — out of work in April
Florida’s unemployment rate climbed to 12.9% in April, the state reported Friday, in a snapshot of the enormous economic fallout from the coronavirus outbreak.
The unemployment figure amounts to more than 1.2 million Floridians. The data are lagging indicators, meaning they are not fully up-to-date. The state has attempted to keep real-time accounting of the extent of job losses on a web-based platform.
Through May 20, the platform shows nearly 2.1 million unemployment claims filed since March 15. Of those, 1.5 million have been verified as individuals — equating to 17% of the state’s workforce. The unemployment rate for May will be released June 19.
The state also released data Friday showing the extent of local job losses. Tourism-focused Monroe County now has the second-highest unemployment rate in the state, at 17.5%. The Florida Keys have been shut down to non-residents for two months.
In Miami-Dade, the unemployment rate climbed to 11.9% in April, while in Broward it hit 14.5%. By comparison, the national unemployment rate for April was 14.7%.
Among metro areas, only Gainesville and Tallahassee have unemployment rates below 10%. Unemployment in the Greater Miami metro area, which includes Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties, hit 13.2%. The Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford area, home to theme park and hotel workers, had the highest metro unemployment rate, at 16.2%.
The state also provides industry snapshots. Employment in the state’s leisure and hospitality sector fell by 39.6%, and by 41.2% in food and accommodations services. Of all the state’s industries, only finance and insurance saw job gains in April.
Over the past 12 months, more than a million jobs have been wiped out — about half of them, or 520,200, in leisure and hospitality.
And the data also showed the labor force itself is shrinking — meaning some workers have chosen to give up looking for work entirely. The state’s civilian labor force contracted 8% compared to last year. By comparison, the U.S. labor force shrank 3.7%.
“We’re still shedding as we enter the last week of May,” said Ned Murray, associate director of the Florida International University Jorge M. Pérez Metropolitan Center, in an email. “We’re all trying to get our arms around it but it’s so unprecedented and difficult to project the bottom let alone a recovery.”
This story was originally published May 22, 2020 at 10:41 AM.
