In Case You Missed It…Florida and Texas Job Market

MIAMI HERALD
Florida loses 78,000 jobs -- worst in U.S.

Florida led the nation in job losses over the past year. But the unemployment rate actually fell slightly from May to June.

Posted on Sat, Jul. 19, 2008

BY SCOTT ANDRON

It wasn't long ago that Sun Belt states like Florida and Texas attracted a steady stream of newcomers from up north, pushing their economies ever forward and creating new jobs.

Now, it would seem, the Sunshine State and the Lone Star State have parted ways.

Florida led the nation in lost jobs over the past year, with 78,100, according to figures released Friday by the U.S. Department of Labor.

Texas, on the other hand, had a job-creation bonanza, adding a whopping 245,000.

Florida's rising cost of living has slowed the state's growth. And the recent housing boom has left South Florida with a large inventory of empty homes and condos

and little call for construction workers to build more.

Florida right now is even worse off than Michigan, that quintessential Rust Belt state, which lost only 48,600.

The state's problem remained the construction industry, which lost 81,600 jobs. That loss was partially offset by an increase in government and healthcare jobs.

The good news is that the unemployment rate actually went down a little, to 5.5 from a revised May figure of 5.6. The June 2007 rate was 4 percent.

But given the condition of the economy, unemployment is expected to slowly work its way upward.

"I think it's going to continue to drift up through the middle of 2009," said Sean Snaith, an economist at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.

Snaith said he's expecting it to peak around 6 percent.

In Miami-Dade, the unemployment rate grew to 5.2 percent in June, up 0.1 percent from the previous month.

The statewide and Miami rates have been adjusted to take normal seasonal fluctuations into account.

The government doesn't publish monthly adjusted figures for other Florida counties, which makes month-to-month changes difficult to interpret. But all the numbers were up from last year:

• Broward's rate was 5.1 percent in June, up from 3.7 percent for the same month in 2007.
• Monroe was at 4 percent, up from 2.9 percent a year ago.
• Palm Beach was at 6 percent, up from 4.5.

Snaith said things could get better sooner if oil prices

which he thinks are over-inflated -- come down. That would help strengthen the state's record-low consumer confidence, he said.

If gas prices were to keep rising, that would be bad news for Florida's tourism business, which has been holding out fairly well so far. The industry has added about 4,000 jobs over the past year, according to the state Agency for Workforce Innovation.

By contrast, Texas gained 38,700 tourism jobs over the past year. The state has added jobs across many industries, although growth has actually been slowing in recent months.

Regardless of the unemployment rate, jobs are still out there for people with the right skills, said Adriana Henao, a search consultant for the Mergis Group, a branch of Fort Lauderdale-based Spherion.

Henao works with finance and accounting specialists in Miami, and she said there's plenty of demand for those with the right education and experience.

Some of these skilled workers are turning down offers from other companies or demanding more money as inducement to move.

Some skills always will be in demand, Henao said.

"No matter how the market is," she said, "an accountant will always have work."