Gov. Rick Scott is cheering job growth in Florida, saying that more than 700,000 jobs have been added to the state since December 2010. That came on the heels of nearly 39,000 new jobs created in November, the highest single month of private sector job growth since Scott took office.
That milestone is significant, he said, because it surpasses a campaign promises to create 700,000 jobs in seven years. Scott, however, is only tracking private sector jobs, and not counting the more than 25,000 government jobs that have been cut since he took office, according to statistics provided by Politifact.
Also, the milestone is a bit different from Scott’s original campaign promise that he would work to create 700,000 jobs on top of the 1 million jobs economists said Florida would add on its own by 2017, even if state lawmakers did nothing to help create them. Those jobs were expected to come as a natural extension of the improved economy on the national scale.
Scott, however, no longer mentions the additional 1 million jobs number, and instead has said he’s satisfied a campaign promise three years early.
“I applaud our job creators across the state who sacrifice and work hard to create new jobs,” Scott said, in a release. “Every job impacts a family, and we will keep working each day to make Florida the world’s No. 1 destination for jobs.”
The state’s unemployment rate dropped to 5.8 percent, down nearly a half-percent from where it was a year ago.
Scott’s office also touted a quarterly Manpower Employment Outlook Survey that showed 22 percent of businesses saying they expected to hire more workers during the first three months of 2015.
In November, Florida’s 24 regional work force boards reported nearly 34,000 people were placed in jobs in the state. An individual who receives employment and training assistance through a CareerSource Center, and finds a job within 180 days, is deemed a placement, and can be reported by a regional work force board. Of these people, nearly 6,800 were receiving unemployment assistance.
