New claims for unemployment insurance in Florida declined in the week ending April 4, but remained at extremely high levels.
The U.S. Department of Labor Thursday morning reported 169,885 claims filed in Florida for the week, down from 228,484 the previous week.
However, the number of claims for the week was far above the 5,103 reported a month ago before a surge of business closings related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Nationally, the number of new claims was 6.61 million for the week ended April 4, a slight decrease from the revised 6.87 million filed the previous week.
New data on Jacksonville’s labor market in March will be released next week when the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity reports on local area unemployment.
However, the surveys for the monthly labor market report are conducted in the middle of each month, so the March data will probably not reflect the full impact of the pandemic that affected businesses in the last two weeks of the month.