Florida’s unemployment rate remained unchanged in October, holding at 11.9 percent from September but still above the 11.3 figure posted a year ago, the Agency for Workforce Development reported Friday.
The lack of improvement in the state’s jobless rate was blamed on continued sluggishness in housing and credit markets that has idled construction and slowed sales of existing property. The national seasonally adjusted average was 9.6 percent
The state’s top labor officials said the plateau has a bright side, a 35,700 increase in the number of available jobs, the strongest year-to-year increase since May 2007. Such growth may be contributing to improved consumer confidence, which according to a University of Florida rose six points in October from the previous month.
“While Florida’s unemployment rate did not decrease this month, we continue to see positive signs of stabilization and growth,” said AWI Director Cynthia Lorenzo, noting also that Florida led the nation last week in the decrease of first-time unemployment applicants.
Amy Baker, coordinator of the Legislature’s Office of Economic and Demographic Research, says October’s figure, though painful to those included in the count, is a positive sign that previously discouraged workers are returning to the market in search of jobs.
“People are beginning to have more confidence that if they return to the market they will actually find work,” Baker said. “During a recovery, we typically see a double dip reflecting that.”
Still, Baker said the pace of the recovery continues to be slow, not just in Florida but across the country. State economists, scheduled to meet Monday to divine Florida’s economic outlook, are expected to ratchet down recovery estimates and extend the time it will take for the state to get on more solid economic footing.
Much of that is based on continued sluggishness in the housing market, in Florida and elsewhere. The state continues to have a substantial backlog of existing housing, a glut that also affects the construction market.
In addition, a recent survey of loan officers by the Federal Reserve indicates credit markets have tightened over the past quarter, with 13 percent of loan officers saying lending criteria has gotten more stringent, up from 3.6 percent who felt that way in July.
Credit markets play a more critical role in Florida than slow growth states because the ease with which someone can sell their home and finance a new one directly affects the number of transplants to the state. Florida’s economic growth for decades has been driven by booming population that has fueled construction and services growth.
“We’re dependent on what happens in other parts of the country,” Baker said. “We are the recipient of economic improvement in other regions.”
The pace of the recovery is under a microscope as Rick Scott prepares to take office as governor, promising to put people back to work as his number one priority. The jobless rate over the next few months will be the comparison figure by which Scott’s work is gauged, though economists say cyclical and national trends will likely have at least as much, if not more, to do with Florida’s recovery than most policies undertaken by state government.
Hendry County in south-central Florida had the state’s highest jobless rate in October at 18.3 percent. It was followed by Flagler County along the northeast Atlantic coast at 15.5 percent and St. Lucie County on the Treasure Coast with a 14.7 percent rate.
Liberty and Leon Counties had the lowest unemployment rate in the state with rates of 6.9 percent and 7.7 percent respectively. Both have heavy concentrations of government employees, which tend to be more immune to vagaries in the economy than private sector workers. Alachua, which includes the University of Florida, and Okaloosa County, which has a huge number of similarly insulated military personnel, came in tied for third at 7.8 percent.
By Michael Peltier
The News Service of Florida
