Unemployment claims soar in Florida
April 23, 2020 - More than half a million Floridians filed initial unemployment claims for the week ended April 18, according to a report Thursday morning from the U.S. Department of Labor. There were an estimated 505,137 first-time claims filed last week, the second-highest total of any state, lagging only California. Florida saw an increase of 324,718 claims over the first-time claims filed for the prior week. The jump in claims may be a sign that the state's computerized system for filing claims, which was not functioning well early on, is finally working better. In the past 5 weeks, nearly 1.16 million Florida residents have filed initial unemployment claims. Nationally, there were 4.4 million initial claims filed in the week ended April 18. About 26 million people across the United States have filed for jobless aid in the five weeks since the coronavirus outbreak began forcing millions of employers to close their doors, the Associated Press reported.