Florida Unemployment Highest In 17 Years
LABELLE, FL. -- Florida�s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for December 2008 is 8.1 percent with Hendry county in 4th place among counties with 10.5% of its workers still seeking jobs. The Florida statistics represent 752,000 jobless out of a labor force of 9,313,000. The Florida unemployment rate is 0.7 percentage point higher than the revised November rate of 7.4 percent and is up 3.6 percentage points from the December 2007 rate.
Hendry County, historically with the state's highest unemployed, had an unemployed rate of 10.5%, 2017 workers unemployed out of a work force of 17,188. Glades county had a rate of 7.7% with 380 unemployed in the county's 4543 person work force.
Hendry county came in behind Hernando and Hamilton county with each having 10.9% unemployment rates, and Flagler county with the state's highest rate at 11.7%.
Where's a Florida job mecca? Perhaps the Tallahassee or Gainesville area, where the state lowest unemployed rates were tallied of 5.7% and 5.3% respectively.
The state�s current unemployment rate is 0.9 percentage point higher than the national unemployment rate of 7.2 percent. Florida�s December 2008 unemployment rate is the highest since September 1992, when the rate was 8.9 percent. Prior to 1992, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for Florida using current methodology peaked at 9.7 percent in January, February, and March of 1976. A different methodology was used to calculate unemployment rates prior to 1976; during that time, the rate reached a high of 11.9 percent in May 1975.
Florida�s total nonagricultural employment in December 2008 is 7,784,200, representing a job loss of 255,200, or 3.2 percent compared to December 2007. This is slower than the national rate for December which is 1.9 percent. The December 2008 rate of job loss continues the trend of over-the-year declines that began in September 2007, primarily due to declines in construction.
Don, I have a question...how skewd are the real figures when you take into account the number of people that can't file, like self-employeds, and those who have used up benefits and those that have been denied benefits and are still unemployed? The government's figures don't tell the whole true story about how bad it is out there and how bad it is going to get.
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