Quote
Fla. Unemployment May Peak At 12.3%
POSTED: Saturday, February 6, 2010
UPDATED: 1:49 pm EST February 6, 2010
Scott Olson/Getty Images
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- State economists now expect Florida's unemployment rate to peak at 12.3 percent later this year - topping the modern record by nearly half a percentage point -- and remain in double digits for another two years.
They increased their last estimate by nearly a full percentage point Friday even as federal officials announced the national figure had dropped from 10 percent to 9.7 percent in January, the first decline in seven months
Florida's unemployment rate hit 11.8 percent in December, just under the 11.9 percent record set in May, 1975. That was the highest rate since Florida began keeping unemployment statistics in 1970.
"We obviously recognize that the employment picture has been worsening since the last forecast faster than we thought so we adjusted the pace of what's happening in the short run," said legislative economist Amy Baker.
The new forecast predicts unemployment will hit the 12.3 percent peak between July and September and then decline slowly through the last quarter of 2012 when it's expected to fall below 10 percent.
The economists don't expect the unemployment rate to reach pre-recession levels of 5 or 6 percent until the middle of the decade.
The jobless forecast is part of an economic outlook that will form the basis of the economists' next estimate of state revenues in March. The Legislature will use those figures to formulate the state budget for the next fiscal year starting July 1.
The economists made relatively small changes to other economic indicators in the outlook, most of them moving in a positive direction.
DECEMBER 2009 UNEMPLOYMENT RATE
Alachua County 7.7% down .1%
Baker County 11.3% down .2%
Bradford County 8.9% down .1%
Clay County 10.4% down .1%
Columbia County 10.4% down .2%
Duval County 11.8% no change
Flagler County 16.9% up .1%
Nassau County 11.3% up .3%
Putnam County 12.9% no change
St. Johns County 9.6% down .2%
Union County 9.2% down .2%
Scary predictions but the latest national ecconomic numbers and Jobs were both improving. Still going to be a long rough ride. I think Obama's on the right track just not the fast track.
The policies of this administration and the Congress along with the proposed tax increases and bureaucracy will only result in further recession at worst or continued stagflation at best.
The summary of the below reference article sums what should be done in a nutshell:
QuoteWhat Barack Obama needs to do is abandon the failed methods of the past, namely tax, spend and regulate. He needs to invoke new, revolutionary methods such as cutting government, opening up our natural resources, and deregulating small business. Then the national economy will recover of its own accord.
http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2010/02/03/failed-policies-of-the-past/
Tax increases only "work" when the economy is strong and growing. When you can get past the extremes of the anti-business rhetoric you will find historic evidence of greatly increased government revenues from strong business expansion as a result of tax cuts and other incentives. What has been missing is a device to stop Congress from SPENDING all of the increased and more.
Current policies will only increase the power of the federal government at our expense. Unfortunately, this is the concerted ideology we are dealing with.
QuoteThe distinction between FDR and Obama is that the latter doesn't even have an instinctive understanding of the relationship between free markets and economic growth. He has spent his entire life at the feet of Marxist teachers who preached the evil of capitalism and the superiority of a government controlled economy. I do not believe that, even if he had to prosecute a major war (which is unlikely as "surrender" and "negotiation" are in his vocabulary while "victory" is not), he would call off his dogs. In his mind, business is evil. He will continue his business-bashing tirades and the pursuit of economically crushing policies (e.g., health care "reform," cap and trade, higher taxes on business and the "wealthy") regardless of how many polls tell him that the American people think he is on the wrong track.
Comment by Ron Lipsman | February 6, 2010
But, maybe he does have some "understanding":
QuoteAll this evidence leads to only one possible conclusion. Anyone that believes that Barack Obama is so ignorant of markets that he’s just making misstep after misstep is dead wrong. He knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s going to make it incredibly difficult for any company to borrow money. First by browbeating the banks to the point that they literally ‘check with him’ before lending. The government, in essence, becomes the lender of last resort because you cannot get a loan without his ‘approval’. The administration has already become the lender of last resort for education as you may no longer go anywhere but the government to get a college loan. How long will it be before they have approved lists of majors and colleges?
Businesses like GE that get heavy into ‘green’ technology will be awarded with access to capital; businesses that don’t get on the ‘green’ bandwagon like Exxon will literally get the shaft. Deficit spending of course, will continue.
Saul Alanski said the old system had to collapse before any new system may supplant it. The administration has already issued a document outlining the idea that the federal government needs to step in to help people ‘properly’ plan for retirement. The plan is to force the conversion of all privately held 401(k) accounts. The federal government will ‘guarantee’ a set level of interest in these accounts by forcing the purchase of Treasury Notes. The plan is to do to the private 401(k) accounts what they’ve already done to the social security system: Namely extract the estimated $4 trillion plus in 401(k) assets and replace them with federal IOU’s in the form of Treasury Notes, backed by the full faith of the federal government, of course.
Steve is correct. Soon the ‘producers’ in society will refuse to give sanction to this behavior. The ‘producers’ will go on strike. Atlas will shrug.
The entire world is salivating at the possibility they will get to divide up the estimated $14 trillion that is the total of US GDP amongst themselves. That the rest of the world thinks we’d keep generating wealth at that pace once they start vacuuming it off astonishes me. Do they really think I’ll keep working my fingers to the bone so they can siphon off fifty or sixty cents of each dollar I earn? To all those who actually believe I will, I have four words for them: Who is John Gualt?
Comment by Bill Wavering | February 6, 2010
So why is it the economy grew the most in six years during the forth quarter? Why did January unemployment numbers improve under Obama's policies?
because the typical recessioin lasts around 18 months. It has been more than 18 months. These things cure themselves. I dont like Obama, did not like Bush. His policies have nothing to do with the recovery, time has. There will always be highs, and there will always be lows. Its how the system works.
Do you think the economic numbers increased along with increased hiring, capital equipment investment, a build up of inventories, etc.? Or is it a result of businesses reacting to the market and future expectations and doing just the opposite. Be careful about broad interpretations of numbers. Increased economic numbers were recorded during the Great Depression but proved false as government spending only takes away resources that could be invested in the private sector. I truly hope the economy and employment is getting better but we will have to watch the trends and time will tell.
Sorry, I do believe they fix themselves. A bloated and over valued Dow jones had to come down. Now it is going back up. The housing mark was ridiculous, and it went down. Guess what will and is slowly starting to happen? Its going back up. American spent their way into this problem and will do the same to fix it, and guess what, it will happen again. Americans love to spend, and they will not sit on the sidelines much longer.
From what we see in working with the lower ends of the labor force, the job market at that end is pretty stagnate and may actually drop off more. It will depend upon how much the retail markets stay up or if they fall. If retails falls more, the lower end job market is going to take another severe hit. This may not even show up in the unemployment rolls as many of these jobs are temp jobs and if the workers have already gone through long unemployment periods, their benefits have been used and they may not work enough to earn more credits. Places like Bacardi and Samsonite are in the temp hiring mode rather than permanent jobs (at least for the labor jobs) and are very up and down week by week as it is. Construction is, of course, way off, and many of the jobs that are there, like the courthouse, are going those with (or without) green cards.
This level of job is important as it does give an indication of what is going on with the rest of the job market. No warehouse workers needed means less product produced meaning less sales meaning less accounting meaning less…ETC.
The housing market, which we keep hearing is improving, is still not at the very bottom. For instance, we hear about the Springfield market and that new buyers are coming in. We need to not only say great, new buyers, but realize why they are here. Great values now that the market has crashed. Many are very low priced foreclosures. I know one house that the couple who owned it did at least 120K worth of work and the house is now available about fives years later for under 60K. It may need some work, but it is a better value now that it was five or six years agobefore it got the workl it needed then.
These great values helps generate interest and gets houses back into the hands of people who will use them, but I fail to see any correlation to increasing the values and so helping avoid more foreclosures from people being upside down.
I keep reading and hearing that more residential foreclosures are hitting the market and have we even seen the wave of commercial foreclosures that supposedly is going to occur? And from what a bank or two has told me, they are a comin’.
I think anyone who thinks we are “heading out of the recession†in anyway is very mistaken. We may be seeing that those who have not been effected (or at least not very much yet) are getting tired of waiting to buy that house (certainly if they wish to take advantage of the deals) or not getting the new TV or car, but that doesn’t do anything but bump things up a bit, part of the ups and downs we see in the numbers. For those rest of us, the ride ahead is still one that is long and difficult.
And, this would be the case regardless of who was president or what their polices were. It is a bigger problem than a congress can solve by any method.
Stephen, yes I understand that the Dow is only an indicator. 1 of a million. But I thought I would not throw out all 1 million (namely because I dont know them all!). As far as where the Dow will be in a month, I would wager it will be largely unchanged. I am not going to bore you with the reasons why it will not change, but imo, from what I know, it wont. A month from now it will be w/ in 100 points of where it is now. If its not, then I will no longer be as optimistic as I have reason to be.
As far as my housing point. No I do not think the price of housing was the only thing that had to do with this, but again it was one of a million things that had gone wrong. Of course the price of housing has played a roll in all of this. I know you know that because you are quite smart and stay on top of this stuff.
Stephen - No one has to watch next month, watch what happened last month. Money has dried up in the market and the dollar is the haven to go to with the Euro getting pummeled due to weak Greek and now British debt. Suddenly the US Dollar looks like a great place to invest, and when it rises, stocks go down. means we will see int. rates rising soon, which will further be interesting. We are in a global economy now, so Obama or Bush cannot do much but tax and spend.
Who knew Greeks hold key to rise and fail of US economy.
US buys olives for pizzas and Greece buys all that Windex from US.
Makes sense.
Quotebut compared to forecasts for next month, the last one will look like a walk in the park.
Stephen - 6 months ago, analysts every day were discussing green shoots, now we have none. Be carefull listening to the forecasts. Watch the dollar and see how the markets react, as it gets stronger the stock market caves. Good time to be in cash.
Can you imagine how bad is it up north,like areas of Detroit,upstate NY and Pennsylvania.
Some reports are showing 50% unemployment in Detroit.
Florida is more like paradise,even in recession.