Florida’s jobless rate remained unchanged at 10.7 percent in July, same as in June, but 0.1 percent higher than the 10.6 percent unemployment rate in May, the Agency for Workforce Innovation (AWI) reported Friday.
July’s figure represents 987,000 jobless out of the statewide workforce of 9.2 million.
Gov. Rick Scott, who cut thousands of state worker jobs and campaigned on the promise of creating 700,000 jobs over a seven-year-period, said it’s disappointing there wasn’t a decline in the unemployment rate.
“It’s disappointing that they didn’t go down,” Scott said in an interview Friday with the Times/Herald, politicsmiami.com reports. “The positive is we’re still doing about 9,000 (jobs) a month. But we still have 900,000 people out of work. We need to keep working at it every day.”
From January to July 2011, Florida gained 64,300 jobs, AWI reported.
State employment officials said that starts and stops as the economy recovers were not uncommon.
“Mixed signals from economic indicators during recovery are common,” said AWI Director Cynthia R. Lorenzo. “Fluctuations in rates of unemployment and job growth are typical examples of starts and stops while the economy rebounds and unemployed workers who may have given up looking for work rejoin the workforce.”
Florida’s unemployment rate at 10.7 percent remains well above the nation which posted a jobless rate of 9.1 percent in July.
