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Florida's weekly unemployment claims below 5,000
Despite mounting inflation, people continuing to leave jobs for better opportunities and lingering impacts from the omicron variant of the coronavirus, the U.S. Department of Labor estimated Florida had 4,941 first-time unemployment claims last week.
The total was down from a revised count of 6,044 claims during the week that ended Feb. 12.
The new estimate also lowered a running four-week average of new claims by 601 to 5,898 claims.
Florida had a weekly average of 5,376 claims during the four weeks before March 15, 2020, the date designated as the start of the COVID-19 pandemic by state and federal agencies for unemployment reporting.
Meanwhile, 232,000 new claims were reported nationally last week.
The moving four-week national average is at 236,250. The federal department initially projected Florida had 5,734 new claims during the week that ended Feb. 12.
Unemployment figures released last month showed the state had regained 92.1 percent of the 1.27 million jobs lost in the early stages of the pandemic.
Florida’s unemployment rate in December stood at 4.4 percent, representing an estimated 466,000 Floridians qualifying as jobless from a workforce of 10.66 million.
A January report will be released March 14.
