Florida Residents Are One of the Most Financially Distressed During Pandemic, Study Finds

Florida residents are among the people that are most financially distressed amid the pandemic, according to a study.

WalletHub found in an analysis of all 50 states and Washington D.C. that Florida had the fifth most residents who were affected during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The firm looked at credit scores, people with accounts in distress, and the average number of accounts, bankruptcies filed in January versus July.

It also includes search trends for "Debt" on the web in each state.

Rankings on the WalletHub "States Where People Need Loans the Most Due to Coronavirus" list were also used to generate a score for each state.

The analysis also showed that Florida best performed with credit scores, being no. 45 with the sixth-best score on the list.

States with the most bankruptcy fillings in July versus January were South Dakota, Wyoming, and Idaho.

Florida, meanwhile, ranking on the 24.

Most recent data from Florida Department and Economic Opportunity showed that around 1.16 million Florida residents were unemployed.

This with an unemployment rate of 11.5 percent.

Metro Orlando recorded 2016, 554 unemployed people in July, with an unemployment rate of 15.3 percent.

The metro area has the highest unemployment rate of all Florida metros.

However, the Miami-Ft. Lauderdale-West Palm Beach metro area had more total of unemployed residents at 402, 316.

The two metropolitan areas have bigger workforce than Orlando.

Later in August, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced on Wednesday that Florida would apply for enhanced unemployment benefits signed by President Donald Trump.

Florida made it 33rd state to apply for it.

Florida state Senator Jason Pizzo, a representative of District 38, earlier said that it would likely be at least a week before those who qualify for the benefits to receive the money.

Pizzo said in a report that it is really unfortunate as many will be put behind past rent.

"Remember you have thousands of my constituents who owe rent on the first without a moratorium extension, without this money in hand - and that's the issue. The governor took a long time to make this decision," Pizzo was quoted in a report.

In a previous report, Florida was ranked as the slowest state to process unemployment claim with 86 percent still waiting.

"Nearly 7 out of 8 residents of Florida are still waiting to have their claims processed, most of which were filed from mid-March to early April," the report said.

More than 650,000 Floridians filed for unemployment benefits since March 15.

The state's unemployment system has long had problems. Florida released it online unemployment portal in October 2013.

The system had many occasions of crashes that prevented people from claiming unemployment benefits.

With this, DeSantis then ordered the Labor Department to provide paper unemployment benefit forms to residents.

The forms could be downloaded from the online portal and have it mailed in.

Independent contractors and freelancers were also qualified to apply through the exisiting application system.

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