Florida’s unemployment rate continues to rise
May 7, 2020 - More Floridians continue to file for initial unemployment benefits claims. For the week ended May 2, there were 173,191 initial claims for benefits filed in Florida, a report from the U.S. Department of Labor said. That was down significantly from a week earlier, when about 433,000 Floridians filed for first-time unemployment benefits and from the prior week, when there were about 505,000 initial claims. Since mid-March, about 1.76 million Florida residents have filed for benefits, according to Labor Department reports. Nationally, there were another 3.2 million unemployment claims filed for the week ended April 2, bringing the total number of jobs lost during the coronavirus crisis in the last seven weeks to at least 33.5 million. The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate for the week ended April 215 was 15.5 percent, the Labor Department said.