TALLAHASSEE, Fla — The coronavirus is affecting just about everyone. Many of the people lucky enough to remain healthy are finding themselves struggling financially.
Layoffs and furloughs are now a painful norm for hundreds of thousands of Florida families who don’t have large amounts of money – if any – stashed away for a proverbial rainy day. For them, unemployment benefits could be the difference between putting dinner on the table or watching their children go to bed hungry.
But, as the surge of urgent applications started rolling in, the state’s system for receiving and processing them quickly started to drown. And now, we have the numbers to prove just how bad the problem is.
As of Sunday, April 19, Florida’s Department of Economic Opportunity has received 1,533,723 total claims.
- 652,191 have been confirmed to be unique, meaning some people end up filing the same claim multiple times.
- 649,314 – 99.6 percent – have been verified
- 162,039 – 24.8 percent – have been processed
- 40,193 – 6.2 percent – have been paid.
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Governor DeSantis said last week Florida added more computer servers and brought in 2,000 state employees from other agencies to help handle the unemployment backlog.
So, how much money are we talking about here? Florida offers a maximum benefit of $275 per week for up to 12 weeks. Under the federal CARES Act, jobless people can receive an additional $600 per week.
You can file for unemployment benefits in the state of Florida here.
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