Florida jobless applications hit another pandemic low. Is it an early sign of recovery?

New weekly applications for unemployment assistance in Florida hit another pandemic low last week, the U.S. Department of Labor reported Thursday.

Jobless claims for the week ending Aug. 29 fell from 51,647 in the week before to 39,335. The decline likely reflects several factors, including the termination of $600 in weekly federal pandemic unemployment assistance, in addition to early signs of an economic recovery.

For the U.S., new claims fell to 881,000 from the previous week’s revised level of 1,011,000. The week-on-week drop in U.S. claims was largely artificial: Starting with Thursday’s report, the Department of Labor is changing the way it calculates seasonally adjusted claims to reflect the elevated level of applications the country is seeing as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

The number of actual initial claims under all state programs, unadjusted, totaled 833,352 in the week ending Aug. 29, an increase of 7,591 (or 0.9 percent) from the previous week.

Even with jobless claims in Florida hitting a new low, their level remains significantly above pre-pandemic weekly figures, when new applications averaged about 5,000 a week.

The economic fallout from the pandemic remains severe. Wednesday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released unemployment rates for large U.S. metros. The release showed that for the Miami-Miami Beach-Kendall area, the rate stood at 14.2% in July, among the highest rates for any metro area with more than a million residents. The state also continued to see a steady stream of layoff notices filed to the Department of Economic Opportunity.

At the same time, other indicators are improving. The U.S. Census Bureau’s most recent survey of Florida small businesses showed a week-on-week improvement in the number of firms saying the pandemic was having “little or no effect” on their business. The state’s housing market also remains unusually strong, thanks in part to a lack of inventory.