Florida labor officials reported a January Florida unemployment rate of 11.9 percent, matching the highest on record since the state began counting the jobless a generation ago.
According to the Miami Herald, Florida’s jobless rate in January 2010 was 2.2 percentage points above the national average of 9.7 percent, the Agency for Workforce Innovation said.
Unemployment figures for January rose one-fifth of a percentage point from Florida’s revised December rate of 11.7 percent. The 11.9 percent equals the record high established in May 1975 when Gerald Ford was president and Reubin Askew was governor of Florida.
And while there are now 1.1 million Floridians out of work, the worst may not be over.
Legislative economist Amy Baker predicted last month that Florida unemployment could reach 12.3 percent and remain at double-digit levels for another couple of years.
There was, however, a glimmer of good news nationally in the U.S. Labor Department’s announcement that just 30 states reported unemployment increases in January compared to 43 that reported more joblessness in December.
Florida labor officials said they hope the hiring of thousands of census workers on a temporary basis may ameliorate further slippage in the short term.
“We’re focused on jobs, jobs, jobs. And we’ll never stop,” said Gov. Charlie Crist, who is giving up a re-election bid to seek the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate.
Crist’s primary opponent, former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio, immediately fired off a release to blame President Obama’s stimulus money that was enthusiastically embraced by the governor for only increasing debt without creating jobs.
U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, D-Miami, who awaits the Crist-Rubio victor in November, said Florida is being left behind at a time it appears the rest of the nation is beginning to emerge from the depths of the economic downturn.
Crist said Florida will soon follow.
“Most economists will tell you that the last lagging indicator of an economy starting to turnaround are the unemployment numbers,” Florida’s perpetually sunny governor said.
Crist and Florida lawmakers rolled back an unemployment compensation tax increase last week on the first day of the 2010 legislative session and extended benefits another eight weeks for about 15,000 jobless in hopes of slowing the drag on the state’s wilting economy.
However the benefit from that extended help has already ended, since the federal government covered eight weeks of retroactive benefits from Jan. 2 through Feb. 27.
More than 303,000 jobs have disappeared in Florida in the last year, analysts said, and the lone sectors showing growth were private education and health services.
Fewer than a dozen of Florida’s 67 counties - mostly those with a relatively high proportion of government jobs - escaped double-digit unemployment in January.
Sparsely populated Liberty County, home to a state prison and hundreds of corrections officials, reported the state’s lowest unemployment in January - 7.5 percent.
Flagler County along the Atlantic Ocean in east-central Florida reported the highest unemployment with 17.1 percent of its work force idled.
Tags: Job Search, Unemployment