Florida Department of Economic Opportunity

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.

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.

The state’s unemployment rate now stands at 4.9% as some industries continue to report that people are slow to return to work.

An estimated 503,000 people qualified as unemployed in May, up from 488,000 a month earlier.

State and business officials have argued that the $300 a week in federal aid is keeping people from returning to jobs.

The state’s jobs agency had not posted a timetable about extended unemployment benefits, and no formal announcement had been made about whether Floridians will be covered for the current week because of when the $900 billion federal package was signed.

The state Department of Economic Opportunity on Friday posted a 6.4 percent jobless rate for November, equal to a revised jobless mark for October. The unemployment rate in November 2019, before the pandemic hammered the economy, was 2.8 percent.

Some states carved out single-day poll workers from being denied unemployment benefits. Florida did not.

Among the topics were mail-in ballots and the latest on Florida's embattled unemployment system.