Florida jobless claims rise after Thanksgiving holiday week
TALLAHASSEE -- Florida saw an increase in unemployment claims coming out of the short Thanksgiving holiday week.
The U.S. Department of Labor issued a report Thursday that showed an estimated 5,866 initial jobless claims were filed in Florida last week, up from a revised count of 4,034 during the week that ended Nov. 25.
Last week's total is similar to numbers throughout this year.
Florida has averaged 5,537 claims over the past four weeks and 5,802 weekly claims since the start of the year.
Nationally, 222,000 claims were filed last week, an increase of 1,000 from the previous week.
The national average over the past four weeks is 220,750. Florida had a 2.8 percent unemployment rate in October, indicating an estimated 318,000 people were out-of-work from a labor force of 11.174 million.
The state Department of Commerce is slated to release a November report on Dec. 22.