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Escambia, Santa Rosa Unemployment Shows Decline

The latest job numbers released Friday showed  2,200 people no longer among the jobless during a one month period in Escambia and Santa Rosa counties.

Escambia County’s unemployment dropped nearly a full percentage point — from 11.8  percent in January  to 10.7 percent in February. That represented 1,686 people no longer seeking employment, for a total Escambia County unemployment of 14,801 people. One year ago, unemployment in Escambia County was 11.1 percent.

Santa Rosa County also recorded a large drop in unemployment— from 10.4 percent in January to  9.5 percent in February. Santa Rosa County gained 583 jobs during the period, with a total of 6,763 persons still unemployed. The year-ago unemployment rate in Santa Rosa County was 10.1 percent.

Florida’s unemployment rate dropped to 11.5 percent in February as the state added more than 20,000 jobs, state officials said Friday.

While the drop still leaves the jobless rate just a bit above February of 2010, when it was 11.3 percent, the drop from 11.9 percent in January was seen as good news in an economy that has been stubbornly sluggish. The number of jobs in the state was nearly 33,000 higher than a year ago, the strongest annual growth rate since 2007.

“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 Agency for Workforce Innovation Director Cynthia R. Lorenzo.

It’s also good political news for Gov. Rick Scott, who took office earlier this year promising to get the state back to work. Whether the drop can be credited to anything he’s done or not won’t matter eventually – Scott has set himself up to be measured as successful or not based almost entirely on whether the state creates 100,000 new jobs a year over the next several years.

“The dip in the number of Floridians who are out of work is an encouraging sign and cause for guarded optimism,” said Scott, who visited a workforce center on Friday. “However, 11.5 percent unemployment is still unacceptable because more than one million Floridians need jobs. That is why I remain focused on making Florida the best place to start or grow a business.”

Economists have said for months that they expected the state’s job market would start to recover, basically anytime, but it has been slow in coming.

“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.

Still, the state’s jobless rate, hammered by heavy reliance in Florida’s economy on housing, remains well above the national average of 8.9 percent.

But the increase in jobs available represented the fifth consecutive month with year-over-year job growth since the state started losing jobs in the summer of 2007.

The industry doing best was leisure and hospitality, which saw a nearly 3 percent annual increase in jobs. Other industries with significant gains in jobs included education and health care.

But the bane of Florida’s job market, the construction industry, remained lackluster. It was the industry that lost the most jobs over the year, seeing a 4.5 percent decline, representing just under 16,000 jobs.