Florida unemployment facts :
1. In Florida, your weekly benefit amount is calculated by dividing your total earnings for the highest paid quarter of the base period by 26, up to a current maximum of $275 per week. You can receive benefits for anywhere between 12 to 23 weeks, depending on Florida's current unemployment rate.
2. In the past two weeks, the department has spent $25 million on improvements to the computer and phone systems it uses to collect unemployment benefits applications.
3. When Republican Rick Scott became its governor in 2011, Florida already had one of the stingiest unemployment-insurance systems in the country. As the Great Recession rained pink slips down on the Sunshine State, its laid-off workers received no more than $275 a week in unemployment benefits — a cap that had been set a dozen years earlier and never adjusted for inflation. - by https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/florida-unemployment-benefits-desantis-trump-rick-scott.html
4. When Rick Scott was governor, he could either raise taxes on businesses to maintain the program or slash benefits for workers amid high unemployment to maintain low taxes on businesses. He chose the latter. Unemployed Floridians used to receive up to 26 weeks in benefits; Scott cut that to 12 (though the cap does rise gradually after the state’s unemployment rate exceeds 5 percent). He established a new rule requiring the program’s beneficiaries to meet with at least five prospective employers a week to retain their benefits; eliminated the options of applying for benefits over the phone or in person, forcing all laid-off Floridians to sign up through (a poorly designed, underfunded) website; and he made it easier for employers to “prove” that their laid-off workers had been fired for cause and thus did not qualify for benefits — a change employers eagerly sought as their unemployment-insurance tax rates are partly tied to how many of their former workers qualify for aid. Meanwhile, Scott retained the state’s exceptionally low weekly benefit cap, and an eligibility formula that excludes part-time and seasonal workers, even as a supermajority of U.S. states updated their formulas to include such laborers. - by https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/florida-unemployment-benefits-desantis-trump-rick-scott.html
5. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is particularly under fire for not moving decisively enough to fix the state's system last year. The Tampa Bay Times reports that state auditors warned him in 2019 that Florida’s unemployment website was suffering major problems, including glitches and error messages. State officials reportedly made no serious attempts to fix the issues — even though auditors had warned about them in previous audits going back to 2015. by https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-technology-202/2020/04/02/the-technology-202-state-unemployment-websites-are-crashing-amid-record-number-of-claims/5e84ee3e88e0fa101a758301/
6. Florida to issue paper applications for unemployment benefits, improve computer system Unemployment benefit agency chief apologizes. "You need to understand that, from my heart, I apologize for what you are going through," Florida Department of Economic Opportunity director Ken Lawson said in a video conference hosted by a state lawmaker. "You can count on us to do everything we can, and we're not going to stop."