Once hot, local job market chills
Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
South Florida was in the top 10 of Bizjournals.com’s list of America’s 100 hottest job markets just two years ago. Last year, the area slipped to No. 16.
Today, it has fallen more than halfway down the mountain, landing at No. 58.
Year-over-year, more than 35,000 jobs were lost here, according to the Bizjournals study, which is based on data compiled by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“I attribute it to the bursting of the housing bubble and all of the secondary impacts that came out of that,” said Bruce Nissen, director of research at the Center for Labor Research and Studies at Florida International University.
Last month, the center released its own report that found statewide job growth rose just 0.5 of a percent last year, down from a high of 4 percent in 2005.
Statewide, Jacksonville ranked No. 49 in the Bizjournals study; Tampa-St. Pete ranked No. 89; and Bradenton-Sarasota was No. 99. (Only Detroit ranked lower.)
Houston, Austin and Dallas-Fort Worth were the top three hottest job markets.
The areas that took the biggest hits were among those where the housing bubble grew the biggest and burst the loudest.
And Nissen isn’t very optimistic about the future – at least not in the short term. He said the state would need to reorient itself from relying on cheap land, cheap labor and low taxes.
“Now would be the time for massive government make-work programs or similar types of massive infusions of money or job opportunities,” he said fast payday loan no faxing cashadvance. But, he admits, “there is zero chance of that happening.”
Adding to the downturn are the so-called “half-backs” – people who moved to Florida from the Northeast and then headed back to places such as Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina.
That trend is illustrated in the fact that Raleigh (No. 4), Charlotte (No. 7) and Durham (No. 9), were among the top 10 cities on the Bizjournals list.
Raleigh’s job base ballooned by 22.1 percent since 2003. Charlotte was up 14.2 percent and Durham was up 14.4 percent in the same span.
But Ralph A. Marrinson, chairman of the South Florida Regional Business Alliance, sees a glimmer of hope.
“A lot of our real estate got a little overpriced. Now that it’s back down, I think we will see an uptick,” he said. “The fertilizer of Florida growth is called snow.”
Rather than pump more money into government, as Nissen suggests, Marrinson believes the answer is in greater government efficiency.
“Business has to re-engineer, but government doesn’t. It’s been the same old, same old, but it’s time for re-evaluation,” said Marrinson, who believes the answer lies in zero-based budgeting, which would require every governmental agency to start from scratch and justify any increase.
“We can make Florida a much more attractive state by doing things that are different,” he said.
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