unemployment benefits

Florida’s CONNECT unemployment benefits system failed to connect to much of anything in the early days of the pandemic, leaving millions of recently laid-off Floridians in the cold. The company that built it, Deloitte, has worked to distance itself from the system and is a defendant in a lawsuit against the state.

Just hours after Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office released the draft report Thursday by Chief Inspector General Melinda Miguel, attorneys for the plaintiffs filed a copy of the report in their lawsuit against the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity and Deloitte Consulting, a contractor that helped put in place the state’s CONNECT online unemployment system in 2013.

The change is a compromise between progressive members who wanted enhanced benefits for several more months and moderate Democrats who wanted to curb the weekly payments.

Florida’s online unemployment system was never tested to meet the demands encountered during the coronavirus pandemic, and more than a dozen issues remained outstanding years after the system went live, according to a report released Thursday by Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office.

More than $73 million is needed over the next two years to revamp Florida’s much- criticized unemployment system, which was overwhelmed in the initial weeks of the coronavirus pandemic, the head of the state’s unemployment agency said Monday.

With first-time unemployment claims spiking last week, a top Florida economist is cautioning that the vital, but battered, tourism industry is in for another difficult spring because of COVID-19.

First-time unemployment claims fell in Florida last week, while the U.S. Department of Labor also vastly reduced its estimate of claims for the prior week. The department reported Thursday an estimated 26,559 new unemployment claims were filed in Florida during the week that ended Jan. 16.

Extended unemployment benefits included in the latest federal stimulus package are starting to become available for Floridians out of work because of the coronavirus pandemic, the state Department of Economic Opportunity said Monday.

The state’s jobs agency had not posted a timetable about the extended 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.

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

The U.S. Department of Labor on Thursday estimated 20,787 new jobless claims were filed in Florida during the holiday-shortened week that ended Nov. 28. That was an estimated 23 percent reduction in new claims from the prior week.

The estimate marked the sixth consecutive week of declines in new unemployment claims in Florida and the lowest weekly total since early March.