{"id":279156,"date":"2026-05-21T06:28:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T06:28:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/279156\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T06:28:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T06:28:14","slug":"new-unemployment-claims-in-florida-spike-after-spirit-airlines-shutdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/279156\/","title":{"rendered":"New unemployment claims in Florida spike after Spirit Airlines shutdown"},"content":{"rendered":"

After Dania Beach-based Spirit Airlines<\/a> grounded operations earlier this month, jobless claims in Florida leapt to the highest total for a single week since last June.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Department of Labor<\/a> on Thursday estimated 7,968 initial unemployment applications were filed last week, up from a revised count of 5,573 for the week ending May 2.<\/p>\n

The jump was expected, as Spirit notified the state Department of Commerce on May 2 that 4,853 employees in Broward, Miami-Dade, and Orange counties were being let go because the airline struggled with soaring jet fuel prices resulting from the war in Iran. The layoffs were to occur between May 2 and May 13.<\/p>\n

FloridaCommerce<\/a>, the state’s business development bureau, held “rapid response” worker assistance events<\/a> in Broward and Orange counties last week to help laid-off airline workers recover.<\/p>\n

With the recent estimate, the weekly average for first-time claims in Florida this year is now 5,879. A week ago, that average was 5,756.<\/p>\n

See also: Second suspect charged after viral confrontation with 13-year-old in Boca Raton<\/a><\/p>\n

The last time the weekly number topped the recent estimate was the week ending June 2, 2025, when 8,786 claims were filed after a Memorial Day holiday-shortened week.<\/p>\n

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Nationally, 211,000 claims were filed last week, up from 199,000 the week ending May 2.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After Dania Beach-based Spirit Airlines grounded operations earlier this month, jobless claims in Florida leapt to the highest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":279157,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[249,251,250],"class_list":["post-279156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-lauderdale","tag-fort-lauderdale","tag-fort-lauderdale-headlines","tag-fort-lauderdale-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279156\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}