Governor Tries to Create Florida Jobs By Attracting Foreign Businesses

Recently there's been a lot of news about how Florida's job market isn't doing so hot. The state has been named number one in the country for jobs lost and number two for foreclosures. On top of that, there is the fact that Florida has apparently been losing jobs to China for years.

Despite this, unemployment decreased in June to 5.5 percent. Originally the Agency for Workforce Innovation said that that May’s jobless rate was 5.5, the same as the national average, but refigured data to find that it was actually 5.6 percent.

Although the positive news of even a small unemployment decline is something Floridians need right now, the jobless rate is still the second-highest it has been in more than five years. According to Agency officials, Florida has lost 78,100 jobs in the last 12 months ending in June. This means that approximately 508,000 individuals are without work.

In hopes of improving Florida's job market Agency director Monesia T. Brown says that Governor Charlie Crist and the state Legislature is adding job training projects and trying to stimulate construction.

"The governor's been very focused on creating opportunity for more jobs in Florida," Crist's spokesperson Sterling Ivy agreed.

According to Ivy, Governor Crist is currently putting a lot of effort into trade with hopes of attracting foreign businesses to Florida. His focus has been mainly centered on the United Kingdom, France, Russia and Spain.

Hopefully these efforts will soon pan out, because state economist have recently predicted that it isn't likely that Florida will recover from its dismal economic situation until sometime near the end of 2009. This is six months later than was previously forecasted.

The economists also believe that the state's unemployment is going to continue to climb, despite the small decline experienced in June. According to them, the jobless rate will hit 6.03 percent before things start to improve. The last time unemployment was reached this high was in January of 2002 when most of the country was experiencing higher than normal jobless rates due to the aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks of the previous year.

Other factors causing problems for Florida's economy include a heavy reliance on housing and population growth along, which have both been hurt by the housing slump and issues with the credit market. Increasing prices for both food and gasoline are not helping matters.