Advocates for poor and low-wage workers filed a lawsuit against the state for failing to raise the minimum wage to reflect inflation as required by the Florida constitution.

Lawyers for the New York-based National Employment Law Project and Florida Legal Services filed the lawsuit on behalf of roughly 188,000 minimum wage workers in Florida.

The agency should have raised the current $7.31 hourly minimum rage by six cents, the lawsuit argues.

In 2004, Florida voters approved a constitutional amendment automatically raising the minimum wage each year to reflect the increase in the cost of living.

Florida’s unemployment rate for August is 11.7 percent, a .2 percent jump from July, according to figures released by the state Agency for Workforce Innovation this morning. Another 16,000 jobs disappeared during the month.

The news isn’t all bad, however.

Although 1,084,000 Floridians don’t have a job – and those numbers don’t include those who’ve given up looking for work – the state’s annual job growth rate is up 0.4 percent, representing an increase of 29,800 jobs from last August.

Florida’s jobless rate remained at 10.7 percent in July, 1.3 percent points higher than the national unemployment rate of 9.4 percent, the Agency for Workforce Innovation reported today.

The unemployment rate in June and July is the highest in the past 34 years. In October 1975, the jobless rate was 11 percent.

The rate remained steady although the state has already spent more than $944 million of federal stimulus money on unemployment benefits and resources.

Post reporter Jeff Ostrowski spends some time with the Florida Agency for Workforce Innovation office in West Palm Beach and writes in a story published today that the “frustration is the fallout of Florida’s fast-deteriorating job market.”

It’s not just new applications that are swamping the phone lines. To keep their $300-a-week checks flowing, unemployed workers must complete a short questionnaire every two weeks, either by phone or online.

On Mondays and Tuesdays, getting through to the state’s call center or logging onto the state’s www.floridajobs.org site is especially difficult.

“Mondays and Tuesdays? Hopeless,” Abraham said. “The whole state of Florida is calling.”