The jobless rate fell to 11.5 percent in February as more than 20,000 new jobs were added, the Agency for Workforce Innovation (AWI) said on Friday.
Although the unemployment rate remains above the February 2010 rate of 11.3 percent, it was good news for the state where unemployment has remained stubbornly high, hovering around 12 percent for the past several months.
“This decrease in Florida’s unemployment rate, combined with continued job growth, is welcome news and provides additional evidence that our economy is getting back on track,” said AWI’s Director Cynthia R. Lorenzo.
Economists have been expecting for months now a recovery of the job market, but it has been slow in taking off.
“This is how we anticipated that the labor market recovery would play itself out in Florida – slow, very measured growth in the beginning of the year, then picking up speed as 2011 continues,” said Sean Snaith, the director of the Institute for Economic Competitiveness at the University of Central Florida.
February marks the fifth consecutive month with year-over-year job growth since the state started losing jobs in the summer of 2007.
The industry that created the most jobs was leisure and hospitality, which saw a nearly 3 percent annual increase, followed by education and health care, which realized significant gains.
On the flipside, the drag on the Florida job market continues to be the construction sector which declined by 4.5 percent and lost just under 16,000 jobs over the past year.
Monroe County, which is the Florida Keys, had the lowest unemployment rate last month at 6.9 percent, with Liberty, Alachua, Leon, and Wakulla counties all coming in with rates below 8 percent. Most of those counties have high percentages of government employees.
The highest unemployment rate was in Flagler County, where almost 15 percent of the workforce remained unemployed. Hernando, Hendry, Marion and St. Lucie counties were all above 13 percent unemployment and 43 of the state’s 67 counties continue to have unemployment rates above 10 percent.
While no one is attributing the drop in the unemployment rate to Gov. Rick Scott now in office a little over two months, the governor has pledged to create 100,000 new jobs a year over the next seven years.
Florida’s jobless rate still remains well above the national average which stands at 8.9 percent.
The News Service of Florida
