Florida Department of Economic Opportunity

The report shows many people are leaving their jobs – confident they’ll find work somewhere else.

Workers are shifting away from gigs at hotels, restaurants and entertainment venues for higher-paying jobs in manufacturing, warehousing and logistics.

The unemployment rate in the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater area was 2.9%, while the statewide number is down to 3.3%

The rate fell to 4.4%, meaning 466,000 Floridians now qualify as jobless. Gov. DeSantis says it shows economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

If unchanged, the estimate for the week ending Dec. 25 would be the fewest number of claims for a single week since another holiday-shortened week in late December 2019.

The October rate is 4.6%, down from 4.8% in September. The labor force grew by 29,000.

While the state has ramped up efforts to push people back into the labor force, it has also seen the number of people leaving jobs jump from 193,000 in Sept. 2020 to 264,000 in Sept. 2021.

Sen. Anna Eskamani says this includes delayed processing and people getting locked out of their accounts.

Florida’s labor force has grown by more than half a million people since October.

Judge Layne Smith said Gov. Ron DeSantis had the legal right to halt $300-a-week payments to Floridians from what is known as the Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation, or FPUC, program.

An estimated 530,000 Floridians were out of work in July from a workforce of 10.48 million.

Florida’s June unemployment rate is up slightly from the month before. Statistics released by the state Friday show June's unemployment rate was rate 5%, up 0.1 percentage point from May.