While Floridas unemployment rate has skyrocketed over the last three years, government workers have largely been spared the same pains faced by private-sector employees.
The number of eradicated government jobs represents just a quarter of the private sector's total job losses in the past year. But Democrats have latched onto government job losses as a political issue.
During discussion Wednesday leading to the house budget vote, Rep. Rich Glorioso, R-Plant City, said the budget measures, which he supported, would lead to a loss of 8,000 jobs per year in transportation.
Democrats pounced on Gloriosos comment. Incoming House Democratic Leader Ron Saunders, D-Key West, proposed naming the budget the Job Killer Act of 2010. The House Minority Office issued a release comparing the cuts to similar sized job losses at Sony, AstraZeneca and Sprint Nextel.
But the numbers show that Florida government workers are a lot better off than their counterparts in the private sector.
The government sector has been held harmless as a whole as the greatest recession since the Great Depression ravages Florida, said Dominic Calabro, president and CEO of Florida TaxWatch.
In February 2009, there were 1,118,900 people working in the public sector. A year later, according to the Florida Agency for Workforce Innovation, that number stood at 1,109,600, a decrease of .8 percent.
Meanwhile, the number of private-sector employees fell from 6,263,000 in February 2009 to 6,062,300 by this February, according to the agency. That's a dip of 3.2 percent.
The private sector of Floridas workforce, from senior citizens to small-businesses owners and employees, are being traumatized with loss of jobs, Calabro said.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are 8,124,774 working Floridians. Employment in Florida peaked in February 2007, when 8,730,775 Floridians were working and the unemployment rate stood at 3.6 percent.
Now, Florida faces the highest unemployment rate in its history, at 12.2 percent. The states unemployment rate hovers well above the national average, which stands at 9.7 percent.
While Florida unemployment has been ballooning for several years, the number of state- and local-government jobs actually grew until 2009.
In 2008, the number of Florida state employees rose from 213,4000 in 2006 to 218,100, according to the labor-statistics bureau. During the same period, the number of local-government employees jumped from 769,900 to 810,100 Floridians.
Community unemployment rates reflect the fact that people in the private sector enjoy much less security in their jobs than government employees. Of the 23 largest communities in Florida, only Tallahassee, home of the state government and two large universities, Gainesville, home of the University of Florida, and Fort Walton Beach boast unemployment rates under 10 percent.
