MIAMI – South Florida’s unemployment rate has hit 7.4 percent in February 2009, an increase of 2.8 percentage points from a year ago (4.6 percent). The current unemployment rate was 2.0 percentage points lower than the state unemployment rate of 9.4 percent and the national rate of 8.1. The last time Florida’s February unemployment rate was this high or higher was in April 1976, when the rate was 9.4 percent.
In February 2009, the unemployment rates of the two counties that comprise the South Florida Workforce Region were 7.5 percent in Miami-Dade County and 6.2 percent in Monroe County. The unemployment rate in Miami-Dade County was up 2.8 percentage points over the year and Monroe County was up 3.2 percentage points.
As in January 2009, the Miami-Miami Beach-Kendall metro division was among the state’s highest ranked metro divisions in the number of new jobs created in the education and health services industry for the month of February, behind only the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater metro area (+2,800 jobs). Mining, logging, and construction continue to lose the most jobs (-10,100 jobs), followed by trade, transportation, and utilities (-9,800 jobs); professional and business services (-8,700 jobs); manufacturing (-3,400 jobs); leisure and hospitality (-3,100 jobs); government (-2,600 jobs); financial activities (-1,900 jobs); information (-1,400 jobs); and other services (-1,100 jobs).
“We recently received an infusion of $21 million in federal economic stimulus funds to directly benefit both job seekers and members of the local business community,” said Rick Beasley, Executive Director of the South Florida Workforce Investment Board. “These funds will provide critically needed training, job placement services including summer employment opportunities for young people. The private sector will also benefit from a range of business development incentives that are also geared towards accelerating growth in the regional economy.”
