By The News Service of Florida
A decline in Florida’s jobless claims slowed as the U.S. Department of Labor on Thursday estimated 5,622 first-time applications were submitted last week, 71 more than in the prior week.
Since the Independence Day holiday, the state had seen the weekly count slowly drop from 7,334 the week ending July 11, the third highest one-week total this year.
The claims for the past week come as West Marine advised the state on Aug. 8 that 80 workers will be let go from its Florida Support Center in Fort Lauderdale starting Oct. 3.
Through the first seven months of this year, the state Department of Commerce has received nearly 200 “Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification” letters from companies advising of just over 13,900 layoffs. At the same point in 2025, a similar number of letters were submitted to the state with the projected layoff count at 12,900. After seven months in 2024, there were nearly 140 letters showing an impact to 7,650 workers.
The latest weekly figures remain close to the state’s average since the start of the year, which now stands at 5,980 new claims per week. In that time, the state’s unemployment rate moved from 4.5 percent in January to 4.7 percent in June, with 525,000 Floridians qualified as out-of-work from a workforce of 11.14 million.
The state Department of Labor will update the Florida numbers on Aug. 21.
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