About Those Green Shoots
Valerie Whitney of the Daytona News-Journal tells us the “shoots” are wilted in Florida: State jobless rate hits record 10.2%
DAYTONA BEACH — Florida was one of eight states that set unemployment records for May, with jobless claims reaching 10.2 percent, according to figures released Friday by the Florida Agency for Workforce Innovation.
Flagler County posted the highest jobless rate in the state at 14.4 percent, up from 8.7 percent a year ago. Volusia County reported 10.8 percent unemployment, compared to 5.9 percent last year.
And at least one expert says the bad news is not over.
“Florida’s labor market will be the ugly scar that is slow to fade and serves as a reminder of the economic trauma we have endured,” said economist Sean Snaith, director of the Institute for Economic Competitiveness at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.
“We’re going to experience double-digit pain not just for a few months, but through the middle of 2011,” Snaith said Friday.
…
Florida’s rate of 10.2 percent is the highest since October 1975, when it reached 11 percent, and higher than the national rate of 9.4 percent.
Job losses in Florida in May 2009 continue the trend of annual declines that began in August 2007.
The other states that posted records last month were California, Nevada, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina and Georgia.
Now the reason I felt the GOPression started earlier that the official date is because it was already happening in Florida. The comments are hilarious: “Cut taxes!”, “Incentives to attract business!”, “Only private enterprise can save us!”.
The Republican mantra is how we got into this mess, just like the late 1920’s, and they couldn’t get us out then. Americans pay the lowest taxes in the industrialized world. This isn’t, and has never been about taxes. This is about maximizing short-term profits and to hell with the future.
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States that set records for unemployment in May:
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SOURCE: Bureau of Labor Statistics |
2 comments
My co-workers who got laid off last week are panicked, especially the ones on H1B, who end up having to return to Russia or India if they don’t find a job within two weeks. Yeah right, who finds a job in two weeks with 11.5% official unemployment and 18% real unemployment? Even here in the Silicon Valley, unemployment has risen to 11.2%.
I think the politicians in D.C. must have fiddle factories in the basement of the Capital Building and White House, they seem determined to fiddle madly while Rome burns. The State of California is talking about shutting down in a month because there will be no money to meet payroll and no legal authority to borrow any more. No food stamps because those are state-administered, no Medicaid because that is state administered, no unemployment payouts because those are state administered, it’s going to be 3rd world disaster time *especially* with the cut-off of food stamps and unemployment. No way, no how, are the food pantry system and soup kitchens going to be able to meet the demand of food stamps being cut off and people do not voluntarily starve to death. Either there will be mass civil disturbances including food riots on a large scale, or there will be vicious repression on a large scale that will make the current fracas in Iran look like a kindergarten playground scrap. It’s the end of the world as we know it… but our pols’ response seems to be, “fiddle harder!”.
– Badtux the Apocalyptic Penguin
.-= ´s last blog ..Saturday Musical Social Commentary =-.
Politicians have avoiding making hard choices and no the bill has come due.
Florida is totally dependent on the sales tax and no one is buying anything. They have systematically reducing or eliminating every other source of revenue until there is no money left for anything. They refused to build an emergency fund, and let revenue sources be allocated for single purposes, so there is no way of moving money around in the system to cover shortfalls. They have painted themselves into a box in the center of the room, without even walls to climb or break through.
California has changed since I left in 1991, they couldn’t pass a budget on time then, and they still can’t pass a budget. The problem is that each of the next few years will probably be worse than those preceding and there is no way out.
And this was all predictable, and yet the voters selected a body builder and actor to deal with it because they thought he was the character he portrayed.
Maybe people will pack up and move to Oklahoma.