The Florida Department of Economic Opportunity (DEO) released the November jobs report along with labor force statistics, and the unemployment rate in Florida dropped to 4.5 percent. One year ago the rate was a 5.4 percent.
State officials say the continued drop is more indication the “open for business” policies in Florida have kept Florida’s economy recovering from the pandemic-induced economic slow-down.
According to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), that approximately 210,000 jobs were created in the United States in November, and Florida-based jobs consisted of over 51,1000 of that total. Meaning, Florida’s economy created one out of every four jobs in the country.
“The state by state numbers came out and Florida’s reporting creating on its own 51,100 jobs out of that 200,000,” DeSantis said. “We continue to lead the way in that. There’s a lot of problems going on when you look at inflation, what they’re doing in Washington. Everything is going up. It’s very difficult to keep up when things are rising this much.”
DeSantis maintained that “policies matter” and Florida is “holding down the fort.”
“We’re holding down the fort here in Florida,” DeSantis also said. “We’re going to continue to lead and we’re very proud of what we’ve been able to do. When you look, 200,000 — we’re a massive country, over 330 million people — 200,000 jobs, you know, that’s not a lot for the whole country, and of that, for Florida to be over 50,000, it just shows that policies matter.”
Despite the good news, state economists are still projecting Florida to be enduring what most of the nation is going through: a national labor shortage.
“We’re really starting to see a large number of job openings and employers are saying it’s difficult to find folks to fill those jobs,” said Department of Economic Opportunity Chief Economist Adrienne Johnston.
The DEO also said that Florida’s economy is not quite back to where it was pre-COVID, but that Florida has recovered over 90 percent of the jobs lost from the pandemic. That equates to a rate of 5.7 percent, while the national rate is just 4.1 percent.
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Grant Holcomb is a reporter at the Florida Capital Star and the Star News Network. Follow Grant on Twitter and direct message tips.
Photo “Woman Working in an Office” by Sourav.
