Politics
Florida initial jobless claims decrease by more than 800 for week ending Jan. 17
Last week’s decrease in new unmployment filings comes as the jobless rate climbs to 4.3%.
The number of new unemployment claims in Florida dropped for the first time this month.
There were 6,331 first-time filings for the week ending Jan. 17 in the Sunshine State, according to data released by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL). That’s down by 815 claims from the 7,146 for the week ending Jan. 10 after seasonal adjustments. That’s a 12.09% drop.
It’s the first decrease in new filings since December. The first two weeks of 2026 showed significant increases in claims.
The national picture reflects the trend in Florida, though more dramatically. There was a notable drop in in new jobless filings across the country. A total of 259,552 first-time unemployment claims across America for the week ending Jan. 17.
That’s down by 71,411 or a whopping 21.6% decrease. It’s about what DOL analysts had expected as economists with the agency projected a 22.2% decline of 73,459 claims.
The national figures were also down in the year-over-year comparison. There were 284,325 filings made across America for the same comparable week in 2025.
The initial jobless claims report comes as FloridaCommerce, the state economic development bureau, released the general unemployment rate data on Friday. December’s unemployment rate ticked up to 4.3% in December, the second month in a row that figure increased. That number was just below the national rate of 4.4%.
The November figure in Florida was 4.2% and no data is available for October due to the federal government shutdown that disrupted research on unemployment indicators.
But the final two months of 2025 were up notably from September’s rate of 3.9% in Florida. According to FloridaCommerce analysts, December’s jobless rate is also up a 0.9 percentage point from a year ago when the figure was 3.4%. Florida had remained around a jobless rate of 3.7% for most of the Summer before increasing in August.
Miami-Dade County had the lowest unemployment rate in December at 2.5% while Taylor County had the highest figure at 9.1%.
