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New jobless claims stay at pre-pandemic level
Florida continues to see pre-pandemic levels of unemployment claims, with an estimated 4,092 first-time applications for benefits submitted last week.
The estimate for the week that ended Aug. 14 was down from a revised count of 5,905 for the week that ended Aug. 7, according to a report released Thursday by the U.S. Department of Labor.
The federal agency initially reported 4,381 new claims during the week that ended Aug. 7. Even with the revision, Florida has had two consecutive weeks of the lowest numbers of unemployment claims since February 2020.
The state Department of Economic Opportunity marks the start of the pandemic for unemployment purposes as March 15, 2020.
For the past four weeks, Florida has averaged just under 7,000 new claims a week. Nationally, the labor department estimated the number of new claims for the week ending Aug. 14 at 348,000, a decrease of 29,000 from the previous week.
The federal agency said that was the lowest level of initial claims since March 14, 2020, when it was 256,000. Florida had 6,463 claims during the week that ended March 14, 2020.
The following week, claims jumped to 74,313. The influx peaked during the week that ended April 18, 2020, when 506,670 claims rolled in.
The state Department of Economic Opportunity will release a July unemployment report on Friday.
