This originally appeared in tallahassee.com
Florida’s unemployment rate jumped a full percentage point in January from the month before to 8.6 percent, with 800,000 workers out of a job, state officials said Friday.
It’s the highest the state’s seasonally adjusted, nonagricultural jobless rate has been in more than 16 years — since September 1992, when it hit 8.9 percent.
Florida’s January rate also was a full percentage point above the 7.6 percent national figure for that month.
That’s due largely to Florida’s heavy reliance on construction and the continued decline in the housing market, said officials with the Agency for Workforce Innovation.
Construction was down 100,700 jobs in January compared to the same month a year ago in Florida. That’s a 17.9 percent decline. Construction accounted for more than 26 percent of the 355,700 jobs the state lost over that one-year span.
“We are working diligently to ensure federal stimulus funds are distributed quickly to have significant impact on increasing benefits and enhancing our services to Floridians,” said interim Workforce Innovation director Cynthia R. Lorenzo.
Gov. Charlie Crist already has signed an agreement with the U.S. Department of Labor to increase weekly unemployment benefits by $25. That increase went into effect Feb. 22. Unemployed workers should start getting the extra dollars by the end of March. It is expected to bring $345 million in stimulus money to Florida through the end of 2009.
Crist also has recommended to the Legislature that about $81 million in stimulus be spent this budget year, which runs through June 30, and nearly $77.8 million in the next one to match job seekers with businesses and train workers.
The governor also has proposed using $32 million in stimulus over the next two years to improve and expand the agency so it can better handle the crush of unemployed workers seeking compensation and job-finding assistance.
State officials have estimated Florida will get more than $13 billion in stimulus money over three budget years, including about $10 billion that could be used in state budgets. It’s expected to create or retain 206,000 jobs in Florida over that span.
Federal officials also announced Friday a national unemployment rate of 8.1 percent for February. State figures can lag two or more weeks behind national numbers.
Florida’s January rate was up 3.6 percentage points from the same month a year ago. The highest the state’s unemployment rate has been since the current method of calculating it was adopted was 9.7 percent in each of the first three months of 1976.
Besides construction, other hard-hit sectors were trade, transportation and utilities, down 5.3 percent from January to January; professional and business services, down 7.2 percent; leisure and hospitality, down 3.9 percent; manufacturing, down 8 percent; financial activities, down 3.5 percent; other services, down 3.8 percent, and information, down 6.8 percent.
The only sectors with job increases over the year were health and education, up 2.3 percent, and government, up 0.4 percent.
Growth in nursing and residential care facilities accounted for much of the education and health increase. Government was up due largely to shifting seasonal patterns in state university employment.
Eli Lilly
