FLORIDA SUMMARY
Federal Government employment growth in Florida strengthened over 2020 as a result of the Decennial Census, but historic deficits and national debt will loom large going forward. Average job growth in the Federal Government sector in Florida will average just 0.1% during 2021-2024, with growth turning negative during 2021 after the temporary hiring surge during the census year in 2020.
U N E M P LOY M E N T The unemployment rate in Florida has fallen from its May 2020 peak of 14.2% and stands at 5.0% as of June 2021. When unemployment spiked to 14.2% in May of last year, this was 2.9 percentage points higher than the peak level of unemployment from the Great Recession. This unprecedented surge in unemployment occurred over just three months, while it took two-and-a-half years for the unemployment rate to reach its peak in the Great Recession. Nationally, and in Florida, the level of workers who are working part-time but not by choice, and workers marginally attached to the labor force— defined as workers who are neither working nor currently looking for work but indicate that they want and are available for a job and have looked for work in the past 12 months—also spiked during the public health shutdowns. When adding these workers and discouraged workers—defined as workers who are currently not working and did not look for a job in the four weeks preceding the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly survey of households—to the headline unemployment figure, U-3, we get the broadest measure of unemployment estimated by the BLS, known as U-6.
measures. U-6 in Florida averaged 12.0% during third quarter of 2020 through second quarter of 2021, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Meanwhile, the national rate of U-6 averaged 11.9% over that same period. U-6 unemployment in Florida during third quarter of 2020 through second quarter of 2021 was 0.8 percentage points below the rate in 2014, but lower than the 16% rate in 2012, the 17.6% rate in 2011, and down 5.0 percentage points from its peak average rate of 19.3% in 2010 (the nation’s U-6 averaged 16.7% in 2010). As the economy continues to recover and the COVID-19 pandemic abates, these numbers will continue to fall in Florida through the end 2021. Analysis of how U-6 behaves relative to the headline unemployment rate (U-3) continues to provide important information necessary to fully understand the health of the labor market. The gap between these two measures of unemployment is narrowing. The average spread between U-6 and U-3 for 2020 at the national level was hovering at 5.0 percentage points, while that gap was 5.5 percentage points in Florida.
Looking at U-6, we see a labor market that is still suffering from the trauma of public health Institute for Economic Forecasting
13
