Gov. Rick Scott has gone West, stopping in Los Angeles in an effort to lure California businesses to the Sunshine State.
On Sunday, Scott arrived in California with hopes of bringing companies to Florida to help boost the state's economy. On Monday, Scott's schedule was jam-packed full of meetings.
Los Angeles is the first stop in a three-day tour of California, which will also include stops in San Jose and and San Francisco.
Scott will meet with 13 different companies and will participate in a panel discussion sponsored by the Milken Institute. The governor will be just one of several state governors to talk about critical issues facing their states. Scott will be trying to push why Florida is the best state for business as part of the panel.
Scott made a similar trip to the Golden State last year, but this year, he's taking a slightly different approach, aiming to sway businesses to the East Coast with one primary tactic in mind: using California's minimum wage hike to incentivize bringing businesses to Florida.
“My goal, one-hundred percent, is to get individuals and companies to move to Florida,” Scott said in an interview. “By raising the minimum wage in California, 700,000 people are going to lose their jobs, there are a lot of opportunities for companies to prosper in Florida and compete here and that’s what I’m going after.”
California announced it would be increasing its minimum wage to $15 an hour gradually until it goes fully into effect by 2023. California lawmakers approved the measure to slowly increase the minimum wage until 2022, while smaller businesses with fewer than 25 employees have until 2023 to implement the wage hike.
California Gov. Jerry Brown signed the minimum wage increase into law last month.
The state's current minimum wage is $10 an hour, while Florida's is $8.05.
Both states have surpassed the national job growth since 2015 and Florida has passed the national private sector job growth rate since Gov. Scott took office in 2011.
According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, private sector jobs grew by 2.3 percent nationally from March 2015 to March 2016, compared to 3.2 percent growth in Florida and 2.8 percent in California.
Since 2011, Florida’s job growth percentage has been higher than California’s -- private sector jobs have jumped 17.2 percent while California’s private sector job growth rate has been slightly smaller at 15.8 percent.
The national increase for private sector jobs has been 12 percent since 2011.
“As a country, we still have to understand we are competing globally,” said Scott at the Milken Institute panel Monday. “If we don’t continue to build this country...for jobs, we’re going to have a problem.”
Scott’s last scheduled day in California is Wednesday.
Reach reporter Allison Nielsen by email at allison@sunshinestatenews.com or follow her on Twitter: @AllisonNielsen.
