Floridas job growth, which led the nation in May, slowed to a crawl in June as the 4,300 jobs added werent enough to budge the unemployment rate. It remains at 10.6 percent.
Factor in unemployed workers who have given up looking for a new job and part-time workers in jobs mismatched to their skills, and the states underemployment rate is 18.7 percent.
The Agency for Workforce Innovation report released Friday shows the jobless rate is 0.8 percent less than June 2010, but there are still 982,000 unemployed workers in a work force of more than 9.23 million. Floridas slow job growth is a reversal of the 28,000 jobs added in May, which were more than the rest of the country combined. So far this year, the Sunshine State has added a total of 85,500 jobs.
I hope its not just a one-month phenomenon, said AWI chief economist Rebecca Rust. Were just holding steady, were just stable this month. Were not showing the improvement at the same level that we saw in May, she added.
Floridas rate is the fourth-highest in the nation, behind Nevada, California and Rhode Island.
The June numbers interrupt Gov. Rick Scott's streak of five straight monthly unemployment rate decreases, with the jobless rate falling from 12 percent since he took office in January. Releasing a statement while on vacation in Montana this week, Scott decided to focus on the positive job creation this year, rather than the stagnant unemployment rate.
"(Friday) I learned that since January, Florida has added 85,500 new jobs, 4,300 of which were added in June. This is great news for Floridians. I am encouraged that Florida is still bucking the national trend in unemployment. We maintained a steady unemployment rate from May to June while the national unemployment rate continued to climb. Ultimately, my goal is to make sure every Floridian has the opportunity for a job. This wont happen overnight, but were off to a great start. Weve begun transitioning our work force to the private sector, streamlining government functions and leading our state in the right direction," Scott said.
Florida has a long way to go before reaching the heady heights of the boom years, when unemployment fell to 3.3 percent at one point in 2006. There are currently four job seekers for every job opening in the state.
"While Florida's continued pattern of job growth is good news, we still have much work to do to restore our state's economy to pre-recession levels, and that effort remains our highest priority. Under Governor Scott's leadership and through Florida's nationally recognized work force services, we are committed to ensuring our employers and potential employers have the support they need to succeed and create the jobs that will continue Florida's forward momentum," said AWI director Cynthia Lorenzo.
The stagnant month-to-month growth, however, belies the significant year-over-year gains. Florida has added 53,000 jobs in the past 12 months, with the vast majority coming from the leisure and hospitality sector, which contributed 46,700 jobs.
Recent trends continued, though, in government and construction sectors, which have lost 16,000 and 9,400 jobs in the past year, respectively. The losses are mainly due to the federal worker layoffs from the 2010 U.S. Census and the continuing slide of the housing market.
Year-over-year construction job losses have been declining in recent months, however, reflecting small month-to-month increases. But Floridas housing woes are far from over, since a backlog of foreclosed properties is depressing home values and keeping the states inventory of houses high.
The construction industry and housing markets really cant recover until that backlog is cleared, Rust said.
The Miami and Orlando metro areas drove year-over-year job gains, adding 12,700 and 8,000 jobs, respectively, but the end of the space shuttle program is cutting into the Space Coasts economy, which gave back 5,500 jobs over the past 12 months. The Cape Coral-Fort Myers metro area continues to suffer from the abysmal housing market and loss of construction jobs, shedding 3,000 jobs since June 2010.
Space Coast job losses in the Melbourne-Palm Bay-Titusville metro area will likely only get worse now that the last shuttle mission has ended.
Weve already had several rounds of layoffs and we expect to have more later in the year, Rust said.
Reach Gray Rohrer at grohrer@sunshinestatenews.com or at (850) 727-0859.
