Initial unemployment claims went up in Florida for the first time in about a month to start off 2026.
The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) jobless report for the week ending Jan. 3 showed a spike of 678 claims, going from 3,322 filings for the week ending Dec. 27 to 4,000 in the latest Florida data. It’s a sign that the usual bump in hiring among businesses and especially retailers during the holiday span is over.
Florida had seen declining new unemployment claims among the workforce since before Thanksgiving Day, as businesses braced for the onslaught of increased demand for the holidays. The total of 3,322 claims filed for the final week of 2025 was among the lowest number for the entire year. And the back half of 2025 saw a majority of reports detailing falling jobless filings.
The Florida increase reflects the national trend. There were 308,860 filings across the country to start the year. That’s up by 29,677 claims from the week before, or a 10.9% spike. That’s more than DOL analysts had expected, as they projected there would be a 6.6-percentage-point increase of 17,786 claims.
The latest national figure is a drop in the year-over-year comparison, though, as there were 306,657 first-time filings in the comparable week for 2025.
The Florida jump in claims coincides with the FloridaCommerce report on the November general unemployment rate. FloridaCommerce officials had been hampered from producing monthly jobless data by the federal government shutdown that began Oct. 1 and ran into early November.
But the state economic development agency finally issued some figures in the past week for the November jobs picture. FloridaCommerce officials say the general unemployment rate jumped significantly in November to 4.2%, the highest rate in a few years.
That 4.2% rate is up from September’s figure of 3.9%. FloridaCommerce officials say there was no data for October due to the shutdown halting analysis. The November rate is even a larger jump in the year-over-year comparison, as the figure was 0.7 percentage points lower in November 2024.
FloridaCommerce officials say they anticipate publishing December’s unemployment rate by the end of this month.
