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More than 300,000 Floridians applied for unemployment in March, driving the rate from 2.8 percent to 4.3 percent.

The numbers don’t reflect the half million more who have already applied in April.

Checks to some of the first filers are in the mail, but it’s a small percentage of those waiting.

On Thursday, the Governor finally got a little bit of good news from his own unemployment agency.

121,000 checks are in the mail.

“This includes 33,623 individual Floridians who applied for reemployment benefits after this economic upheaval in the middle of March,” said Governor Ron DeSantis.

That equates to about ten percent of those who applied in March.

But the overall number of those who have filed since the pandemic began is much higher.

“It’s in the eight to 850,000 range,” said DMS Secretary Jonathan Satter.

Just four percent of those applying are seeing help.

Satter, who was recently appointed to fix the system, likened it to asking a seven-year-old car to do too much.

“We just loaded the car with a lot of passengers, and we are expecting the car to drive ten times as fast as it was built for, so we occasionally have to take the car in for a pit stop,” said Satter.

For the last two nights, the agency has shutdown its computer system from 8 PM to 8 AM installing upgrades, but more problems still need to be fixed.

Recently unemployed Scott Read spent more than two weeks trying to file.

Once filed, he’s been faced with getting kicked off the system.
“I approached the website at 7:59 this morning and then as you go through the screens, it gets progressively slower and slower. And then at some point I get pushed out and pushed back to the login,” said Read.

But an order signed Thursday, waives the requirement applicants must certify their claim every two weeks.

Satter said that will immediately clear 80,000 more people to get a check.

The unemployment computer system will be out again Friday night and every night through the middle of next week to install upgrades.