ORLANDO, Fla. — Florida had nearly 222,000 first-time unemployment claims filed last week, the first week of the state’s slow economic reopening under Gov. Ron DeSantis, according to numbers posted Thursday by the U.S. Department of Labor.
Nationally, almost 3 million new jobless claims were filed last week due primarily to the coronavirus pandemic, which has pushed roughly 36.5 million Americans into the unemployment lines since the start of March.
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For Florida, the estimated 221,905 claims followed 174,860 during the prior week, according to the federal agency. The state peaked with 506,670 new claims during the week ending April 18.
Chris DeOliveira, of Winter Springs, is one of the more than half million Floridians out of work.
“We’re still waiting on five federal payments and nobody has any answer on when they are coming, they said they have no way to track,” he said.
Numbers show Florida is still denying one-third of all claims for unemployment.
Although some have been eligible for federal benefits, those too come through the state and have been fraught with errors and missing weeks that the state can’t explain.
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The Florida Department of Economic Opportunity is scheduled next week to release an April unemployment rate, which could give a fuller picture of the economic damage as businesses shut down or scaled back to prevent spread of the virus. Meanwhile, the department has scrambled to deal with claims backlogs and problems with the CONNECT online unemployment system.
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The News Service of Florida contributed to this report.