The devastation Florida's economy is experiencing from the COVID-19 pandemic is becoming more apparent each day with the launch of a new unemployment tracking tool by the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity (DEO).
The fequently updated website shows that more than 1.6 million unemployment claims had been submitted by Floridians between March 15 and Monday, April 20. In Florida, unemployment claims are known as reemployment assistance claims. The state goes on to explain that because people may have applied for reemployment assistance online and by paper, there are many dupicate applications. DEO has verified more than 664,000 unique claims.
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So far, 25.5% of the confirmed unique claims have been processed, with more than $125.5 million paid to over 94,000 people.
Meanwhile, DEO stats indicate that as far back as February, Jacksonville’s jobs picture was starting to show a decline.
A DEO analysis of online job ads for February showed 32,159 jobs being advertised online in Jacksonville. That’s a drop of 4.3% from 33,616 advertised jobs during the same time period in 2019, and before safer-at-home orders were issued to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.
Jacksonville’s healthcare industry dominated the list of available jobs, according to information the DEO pulled from the area served by CareerSource Northeast Florida.
Jacksonville’s technology industry saw some of the steepest month-over-month drops in the top 15 jobs advertised online, with the number of computer systems analyst jobs listed down 14.7% between January and February. Software and applications developer online job postings were off 26.2% for the same time period.
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The DEO is also forecasting the top 10 fastest growing occupations in the Jacksonville will be dominated by the healthcare industry.
Bill Bortzfield can be reached at bbortzfield@wjct.org, 904-358-6349 or on Twitter at @BortzInJax.
