Florida’s new unemployment claims fall again during second week of August

Nationwide, new jobless claims also plunged last week, falling by 9.1%.

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The hot streak for declining new jobless filings this Summer in Florida continued into the middle of August.

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) reports there were 5,470 first-time claims for the week ending Aug. 15. That’s a decrease of 327 from the week ending Aug. 8, when there were 5,797.

The latest DOL report is an extension of a relatively upbeat Summer that has seen claims declining most weeks in Florida. Even when there have been upticks, those increases were minor, except for a notable spike right after Independence Day.

Florida’s decrease in new claims reflected the national picture. There were 172,080 filings nationally last week. That’s a decrease of 17,123, or a 9.1% drop. It’s a more significant decline than what DOL analysts had expected. Economists predicted there would be a 6.4% decline, or a slide of 12,077.

The annual comparison also showed a significant downturn in claims. There were 194,217 new filings for the comparable week in 2025 across the country.

The drop in claims also comes as Florida is seeing its unemployment rate start to stabilize after it had been increasing for most of the past year and a half. June saw a 4.7% jobless figure, according to FloridaCommerce, the state’s economic development bureau. That was down from the May figure of 4.8%, which was the same as April’s.

That figure was the peak for the state after more than a year of increasing jobless rates that ticked up more than an entire percentage point. FloridaCommerce officials will publish the July unemployment rate within days.

The Sunshine State has struggled to post an unemployment rate that’s comparable to the national figure. The jobless rate across America for July fell again, dipping to 4.1%, down from 4.2% in June. The national unemployment rate has been declining most of this year.

The trend of the national number being lower than the Florida rate is a relatively recent development. For about a half decade, Florida had posted a lower number than the national figure before this year.