Florida’s jobless claims plunge

Filings drop by nearly 50% from previous week

Florida started the month of June with a major decline in new unemployment applications as filings plunged by nearly 50% as the reopening of the state’s economy gained momentum.

Claims for the week ending June 6 were 110,520, a decline of 97,187 from the 207,707 filed in the last week of May.

Nationally, the claims figure was 1,542,000, a decrease of 355,000 from the previous week’s level of nearly 1.9 million.

For the final week in May, the state bucked a national trend with a substantial increase in claims. Analysts attributed the spike to workers’ continued struggles to file claims with the Department of Economic Opportunity and continued layoffs and furloughs in the hospitality, restaurant and transportation industries.

To the surprise of most economists, the national jobless rate declined to 13.3% for May from 14.4% the month before. And the U.S. economy unexpectedly recovered 2.5 million jobs after many analysts forecast another round of major losses.

But the recovery has begun slowly. Even with the May hiring gain, just one in nine jobs that were lost in March and April have returned. Nearly 21 million people are officially classified as unemployed.

Last week, U.S. Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia said the national job rebound reflected a reopening of the economy that was “earlier, and more robust, than projected.” He said it appeared “the worst of the coronavirus’s impact on the nation’s job markets is behind us.”

But that doesn’t capture the full scope of the damage to the job market. Including those the government said were erroneously categorized as employed in the May jobs report and those who lost jobs but didn’t search for new ones, 32.5 million people are out of work, economists estimate.

Thursday’s national report

also shows that an additional 706,000 people applied for jobless benefits last week under a new program for self-employed and gig workers that made them eligible for aid for the first time. These figures aren’t adjusted for seasonal variations, so the government doesn’t include them in the official count.

But during a news conference on Wednesday, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell predicted a slow recovery that would see the national jobless rate fall to only 9.3%.

“Unemployment remains historically high,” he told reporters. “My assumption is there will be a significant chunk … well into the millions of people, who don’t get to go back to their old job … and there may not be a job in that industry for them for some time.”

Even as restaurants, bars and gyms reopen, they are doing so at lower capacity. And consumer spending on such services remains far below what it was before the viral outbreak.

Unemployment benefits are providing significant support for jobless Americans, with total payments having reached $94 billion in May — six times the previous record set in 2010 just after the previous recession. This time, the benefits include an additional $600 a week from the federal government.

But that extra benefit is set to end July 31, and the Trump administration opposes extending it. Its opposition has set up a possible clash with House Democrats, who have approved legislation to extend the $600-a-week in federal benefits for an additional six months.

As of Tuesday, the state Department of Economic Security said it had paid out $4.95 billion in state and federal benefits to more than 1.3 million people since March 15.

Meanwhile, CareerSource Broward, the nonprofit job training and search agency, conducted its first virtual job fair of the month on Thursday. The next one is scheduled for June 25. To register, go to bit.ly/CSBDVirtualJobFair