Coronavirus leads to record Florida unemployment claims
Florida saw a record number of unemployment claims filed last week in the wake of coronavirus restrictions on businesses and activities across the state.
A total of 74,021 people filed for unemployment through Saturday, March 21, according to data from the U.S. Department of Labor. Nationally, nearly 3.3 million people filed unemployment claims last week.
That dwarfs the 40,403 unemployment claims filed in Florida during the great recession in the week ending January 17, 2009, the most claims filed in at least three decades, according to data from the federal Labor Department going back to 1987. And nationally it represents the most new claims filed in at least more than five decades.
Last week’s Florida numbers were more than 10 times higher than the 6,463 claims filed the previous week, the biggest one-week increase in the Labor Department data.
And economists say they expect next week’s numbers to be even worse.
“This is one big week that’s going to be followed by at least one more,” said Jerry Parrish, chief economist for the Florida Chamber Foundation.
And Florida’s record numbers could be missing thousands more unemployed workers who have struggled to file claims with the state’s overwhelmed unemployment system.
Florida’s Department of Economic Opportunity has struggled to keep up with the sharp uptick in claims, with newly unemployed workers across the state encountering massive wait times on the phone and technical glitches with the state’s online system.
The department has said it will add 100 additional workers to help process unemployment seekers over the phone and authorize its staff to work overtime, but those changes haven’t yet alleviated the strain.
For many workers, the application is a hurdle in its own right.
One issue complicating matters for many in Miami looking to file is lack of computer literacy or English fluency. According to Leonie Leonie Hermantin, director of development at the Sant La Haitian Neighborhood Center in North Miami, certain filers don’t have Internet at home, or their phones cannot connect to Wifi.
“That’s one hurdle, but it’s almost meaningless, because even if they had access to the Internet, because of a language issue, or sometimes because of a literacy issue, the application itself becomes daunting.”
She said it can take up to two hours to complete a new application.
Hermantin declined to estimate how many in the community Sant La serves are going to be without a job, but said nearly 200 had already come by the center in the past week.
“I know it’s significant—we’ve seen it with all the economic downturns,” shes said. “Our community is negatively impacted when the service sector is hurting.”
Across the state, the leisure and hospitality industries accounted for roughly one in seven jobs according to Florida’s most recent jobs numbers, industries which have been hard hit by mandated closures of bars and nightclubs across the state and restrictions on restaurants and tourism-related businesses in some parts of the state.
“The pain of shutting down such a large and central sector of the economy is not going to be insignificant,” said Sean Snaith, director of the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Economic Forecasting.
He said the state’s economic recovery will largely depend on how long businesses remain closed as states and cities across the country use mandated business and workplace closures and social distancing techniques to try to slow the spread of the virus.
“Every month of this economic lockdown carries with it a huge price tag,” Snaith said.
As of last night, there were more than 65,000 confirmed coronavirus cases across the country and nearly 2,000 confirmed cases in Florida. The virus has already cost more than 900 people their lives across the country and resulted in 23 deaths in Florida.
Uncertain recovery
President Donald Trump has said that he would like to see many businesses reopen as early as Easter, which is April 12, though many cities and states have indicated they would extend closures and restrictions beyond that.
The uncertainty about the timeline for combating the virus has economists divided on what an economic recovery might look like.
Snaith is optimistic that the economy will bounce back soon after restrictions are lifted and said the health of the economy before the spread of the virus could result in a faster recovery than after the 2008 recession. The state’s unemployment rate has remained below 4 percent since the beginning of 2018.
“The economic body was very healthy before this virus downturn was introduced and so our ability to bounce back from it is enhanced by that,” he said.
But Scott Brown, the chief economist at Florida investment firm Raymond James, said that the possibility of multiple waves of the virus, which could necessitate additional rounds of restrictions down the road, could make for a longer recovery.
“I think ultimately the economy will recover, but it’s probably going to be a pretty gradual process,” he said.
This story was originally published March 26, 2020 at 8:44 AM.
