Unemployment hits 14.5% in state; 1.4M out of work

Florida’s unemployment rate for May jumped to 14.5%, with more than 1.4 million people out of work and facing a bleak future as layoffs continue.

The state has lost 850,400 jobs since the same month in 2019, the state’s Department of Economic Opportunity said Friday.

Unemployment in Broward County jumped to 16% from 14.9% in April. The Palm Beach County rate was essentially flat at 14.1%, down a tenth of a percent. The Miami-Dade rate dipped by a half percentage point to 11.3%.

The state’s jobless rate rose from 13.8% in April as the coronavirus pandemic forced businesses to close or cut operations to prevent the illness’ spread.

The rate originally was reported as 12.9%, but it was revised upward because some people who were improperly labeled as “absent from work” had actually lost their jobs.

The biggest job losses year over year were in leisure and hospitality, which has lost 460,500 jobs, or 36.8%, since May 2019, a sign of the decimation in the tourism industry.

Still, Adrienne Johnston, the DEO’s chief of the Bureau of Labor Markets Statistics, used a new conference Friday morning to spotlight improvement in the past month. Seven of 10 major industries, including construction, increased jobs, Johnson said. Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties all followed that trend.

Year over year, however, all industries except construction lost jobs statewide.

Although businesses started to rehire last month after receiving green lights from state and local governments, the pace of recalling people has been slow and many companies continued to lay off workers because they could not afford to employ as many people as before the pandemic.

The state’s jobless rate now exceeds the U.S. rate, which the federal Department of Labor pegs at 13.3%. On Thursday, the

department reported another decline in new jobless filings to slightly more than 1.5 million for the week ended June 13. But while the numbers reflect a continuous drop in new claims, the data raised concerns that some recent layoffs indicate that companies are restructuring and eliminating jobs permanently.

In South Florida, for example, hotels such as the Hyatt Regency in downtown Miami told the DEO that while it had hoped to recall a number of workers furloughed earlier in the spring, it was forced to lay off more than 200 people to guard against a potential soft business recovery.

The sidelined cruise line industry, mostly based in South Florida, still hasn’t operated any sailings since March. They are pushing back plans to restart operations, which in turn will delay a recall of thousands of furloughed workers. Norwegian Cruise Line and its sister lines Oceania Cruises and Regent Seven Seas Cruises now say they don’t see themselves resuming sailings until after Sept. 30.

And Carnival Corp., which operates nine cruise lines, said this week that it will decommission a half dozen ships after losing $2.4 billion in its second fiscal quarter. Meanwhile, Carnival said it would be “speculative” to presume that its Carnival Cruise Line subsidiary would follow through with an announced plan to restart sailings out of PortMiami, Port Canaveral and Galveston, Texas, on Aug. 1.

New hiring opportunities, though, are emerging among large national quick service restaurant chains that have announced their intentions to add thousands of workers this year. McDonald’s, Subway and Dunkin’ Donuts are among them.

Income worries

The slow recall of workers is raising concerns among households, policymakers and politicians who worry that the flow of government relief money will dry up long before the economy fully recovers and companies start to employ more people.

The DEO said that as of Wednesday, 1,437,029 outof-work people had been paid more than $6.5 billion in state and federal benefits since March 15.

But most of the money came from the U.S. government’s relief fund made possible by a $2.2 trillion rescue of the economy passed in late March.

The federal money provides qualified unemployed workers with $600 a week through the end of July on top of their $275 in weekly state payments.

Many economists worry that financially troubled households will be further damaged when the federal money runs out July 31. Although Congress is debating a new program that would provide an extension, there is no indication the authorizing bill will pass.

But there are reports of alternative income plans to replace a portion of the $600 weekly payout that is about to expire.

One plan advanced by a group of prominent economists envisions a new round of federal unemployment benefits of up to $400 a week. The money would be paid atop state benefits currently received by eligible unemployed workers.

In Congress, other proposals envision payouts such as a $450 weekly “return to work” bonus, as well as another round of $1.200 payments for the same purpose.

The latter would be paid under a so-called Reopening America by Supporting Workers and Businesses Act of 2020.

Information from wire services was used in this report.