Florida has seen slightly higher first-time unemployment claims during the past two weeks, but the numbers remain well below levels earlier in the COVID-19 pandemic.

The U.S. Department of Labor on Thursday reported that an estimated 9,082 new jobless claims were filed in the state during the week that ended July 24.

The estimate was down from a revised count of 9,970 claims for the week ending July 17. However, the revised count for the week of July 17 was up from an initial estimate of 8,808 claims.

The two weeks of more than 9,000 claims signaled a slight uptick, after 7,457 new unemployment applications were filed during the week that ended July 10 and 6,739 were filed during the week ending July 3.

Nationally, an estimated 400,000 new claims were filed last week, down 24,000 from a revised count for the prior week. Over the past four weeks, an average of 394,500 new claims have been filed nationally, up 8,000 a week from the previous four-week average.

In Florida, the average over the past four weeks stands at 8,312, up from a weekly average of 7,771 in the prior four weeks. Those numbers are much better than earlier in the pandemic. For example, the state recorded 74,313 jobless claims during the week that ended March 21, 2020, as the pandemic began causing massive layoffs.

During the week that ended July 25, 2020, the state recorded 91,462 new applications. The state’s June unemployment rate was 5.0 percent, reflecting that an estimated 523,000 Floridians qualified as unemployed from a workforce of 10.398 million.

A July unemployment report will be issued Aug. 20.