Florida Is Home to the Second-Most Mass Layoffs in the Nation in July

Another day, another troubling fact about Florida's jobs situation from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

According to numbers not seasonally adjusted by the BLS, Florida accounted for 147 of the nation's 2,176 mass layoffs in July -- second only to California.

Florida's mass layoffs -- which count as one employer laying off at least 50 workers -- was also the third-highest in the country in June and again the second-highest in the nation in May, according to statistics released yesterday.

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This complements last week's data release from the BLS, which showed that Florida lost 22,100 jobs in July -- also the second-largest loss in the country -- while 31 other states actually added jobs.

The state's unemployment rate went from 10.6 percent in June to 10.7 percent for July, while the national unemployment rate dropped slightly, to 9.1 percent.

That still leaves around 987,000 Floridians out of jobs out of the 9.2 million-person labor force, according to the state's Agency for Workforce Innovation.

Amid the job losses, it was reported a few weeks ago that Florida had the largest dropoff in applications for unemployment benefits among the states during the first week of August, which some have attributed to the new rules implemented on the first of the month that change how people go about acquiring their benefits.

Then again, the number of initial claims for unemployment benefits is still climbing -- from 6,363 in May to 9,161 in June and now 12,098 reported in July. Florida recorded the fourth-highest number of new unemployment claimants over the last month.

The BLS didn't separate the mass layoffs per industry by state, but nationally, the manufacturing industry accounted for 28 percent of the 50-plus employee layoffs -- with around 32 percent of the manufacturing layoffs coming from transportation-equipment makers.

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