The post Florida’s new jobless filings show a sharp drop for week ending July 18 appeared first on Florida Politics – Campaigns & Elections. Lobbying & Government..
—
Florida saw a rebound with fewer new unemployment claims after a wild spike earlier in July.
The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) reports there were 6,082 initial filings for the week ending July 18 in the Sunshine State. That’s a drop of 1,252 claims from the 7,334 filed for the week ending July 11.
That second full week of July brought a substantial spike of more than 2,500 filings in one week, pushing the total number of claims filed past 7,000 for one of the rare weeks in Florida this year.
But the July 18 report returned the week’s total figure to more normal numbers. Florida was also in line with the national trend, which saw a substantial decrease last week.
There were 191,296 filings across the country, a drop from the previous week of 53,718, or 21.8%. DOL analysts say the national decrease is substantially more than economists had projected. They expected a fall of 31,379 claims, which would have been a 12.8% decline.
The latest national figure is also a notable drop in the year-over-year comparison. There were 216,023 new filings for the comparable week in 2025.
The national unemployment rate has been improving for most of this year. The latest DOL unemployment rate for June came in at 4.2% across the U.S. That’s a decrease from the May figure of 4.3%.
Florida has also seen a falling unemployment rate after a steady climb for most of the past year. June’s jobless figure for the Sunshine State came in at 4.7%, according to FloridaCommerce, the state’s business development bureau. That was the first decline in months after the May figure held steady at 4.8%, unchanged from April.
But Florida’s unemployment rate had been climbing dramatically over the past year. Florida’s June 2025 figure was 3.8%, and the rate was climbing steadily until the latest drop.
The 2026 jobless figures for Florida are also higher than the national rate for the first time in years. Florida had maintained a lower unemployment rate than the national mark for about five years before it eclipsed the national figure earlier this year.
The post Florida’s new jobless filings show a sharp drop for week ending July 18 appeared first on Florida Politics – Campaigns & Elections. Lobbying & Government..
