Florida Unemployment Higher than National Average – Rick Scott “Concerned”

Former Governor and current U.S. Sen. Rick Scott continues to call attention to employment woes in the state he once ran.

“This is concerning. Florida’s jobs numbers continue to get worse. Unemployment shot up to 4.7% — higher than the national average. Florida lost almost 38K jobs year over year in March,” Scott posted to social media Friday.

Heavily criticized this week for saying high gas prices are “worth it” to him given the threat posed by Iran, Scott changed the conversation with this diss of the Ron DeSantis employment picture, one that amplifies previous concerns about the intersection of rising prices and diminishing job prospects.

“Florida’s unemployment rate is ABOVE the national average and it’s only GROWING. The latest state jobs numbers show we lost over 43k jobs all in critical industries. Florida had one of the worst performing job markets over the past year. Our state needs to stay focused on adding private sector jobs and driving down cost of living — just like President (Donald) Trump is trying to do across the country,” he posted last month to X.

“Higher costs of living in Florida are driving people away from the state. That’s bad for Floridians, bad for business, and bad for everyone. This, on the heels of last month’s jobs numbers, is incredibly discouraging,” Scott posted also in April, responding to a Wall Street Journal article.

“If you don’t have a growing job economy, then your revenues don’t grow. And so that makes it harder. When your revenue’s growing, it’s a lot easier to reduce your taxes, which is what I was able to do. We grew 1.7 million jobs when I was Governor. So what that did was, we got more revenues. And every year revenues came in, I cut more and more taxes, and that’s one thing the state needs to do,” Scott said during an interview with WFLA’s Ryan Gorman in January.

A legislative briefing from the Office of Economic and Demographic Research (EDR) regarding the state’s long-term economic outlook last year, well before the current conflict with Iran raised costs for oil and products that need it, offered further clarity as to the long-term impact of evaporating employment opportunities.

Job creation is expected to be just above 1% per year, with an increasingly older population creating further stresses on the state.

An analysis from Florida TaxWatch further details a bleak forecast. The report projects Florida’s unemployment rate increasing from 3.9% in 2025 to a peak of 4.4% in 2027, before stabilizing around 4% by 2035.

Net migration, like the overall economy, is expected to slow, however. The number of new people moving to Florida per day, minus those who are moving out of the state, is expected to drop from 922 in 2025 to 689 by 2035.

The report also notes a recent uptick in the number of Floridians leaving the state due to economic reasons, such as high property and auto insurance costs, unaffordable housing and more frequent hurricanes.