TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) — The coronavirus pandemic has resulted in a record number of people filing for unemployment.
Florida is approaching one million claims filed since March 15.
The massive amount applications overloaded the Department of Economic Opportunity's website, but progress is being made.
As of Wednesday morning, 650,000 claims have been processed.
Lt. Governor Jeanette Nuñez explains what changes were made to speed up the process.
"[We have] over 2,200 [state employees] that are currently dedicated and volunteering to make sure they address the processing of the applications, the calls to the call center," said Nuñez. "In just a weeks time we went from a six percent processing claims and applications to, now we're close to 50 percent."
Over that same time period the Department of Economic Opportunity paid out almost $412 million to Floridians.
