TAMPA, Fla. – June 1, 2009 – Florida’s economy may not be headed up yet, but at least things are “less worse” than they were, Regions Bank Chief Economist Bob Allsbrook quipped.
Bad grammar or not, the description sums up the views of four economists surveyed by the Tribune last week. A range of economic indicators is mostly negative, but in a few cases their pace of decline has slowed.
Meanwhile, as hard as the recession has hit the Bay area, a new Economic Stress Index developed by The Associated Press suggests this area isn’t suffering nearly as much as parts of California and Michigan, where unemployment tops 20 percent.
“I think there’s growing evidence at the national level that the blackness has begun to lighten in spots,” said Sean Snaith, an economist at the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Economic Competitiveness.
Still, in Florida, “I’m not seeing great signs that things are completely over.”
Nationally, economists and Treasury Department officials are hinting that the worst of the recession may be over. There are some encouraging signs in Florida, too, including:
• A glimmer of hope in employment. On Friday, the state reported the first drop in the unemployment rate in more than three years. It was a small drop – falling to 9.6 percent in April from 9.8 percent in March – but it could mean the rate is stabilizing, state economist Rebecca Rust told reporters Friday.
Take the good news with a grain of salt, though. It isn’t clear yet whether the drop in unemployment was caused by increased hiring or by more people giving up their job search and dropping out of the state’s labor force, Rust said.
• A spark of life in housing. Lately, the Florida Association of Realtors has been trumpeting increasing home sales in the state. For example, sales of existing homes rose 30 percent in March, rising to 13,085 sales from 10,080 sales in March 2008. However, a large number of those sales are foreclosure sales, said Scott Brown, chief economist with Raymond James Financial.
The AP’s Economic Stress Index puts the Bay area’s economic struggles in perspective, measuring unemployment, foreclosures and bankruptcies in every county in the United States.
For example, Hillsborough County got a “stress index” rating of 13.63; Pinellas County, 13.24; and Pasco County, 15.49. Higher scores indicate more stress, up to a level of 100.
By comparison, some counties in California and Michigan have stress index scores of 28 because their unemployment rates are above 20 percent. The least-affected counties in America tend to be in the Plains states, where unemployment is about 5 percent.
Economists are reluctant to say that Florida is in recovery. In fact, they say the state probably will take longer to break out of the recession than other states.
A sobering sign is in sales tax figures, which show Floridians have cut back their spending more sharply in recent months.
For example, in April, sales tax receipts were down 13.8 percent from the same month a year earlier. That’s a steeper decline than Florida saw in the fall, when year-over-year sales tax receipts were down about 11 percent, and over the summer, when the year-over-year decline was about 8 percent.
Meanwhile, Chris Lafakis, an economist with Moody’s Economy.com, sees a troubling trend in Florida’s labor market. Though April’s unemployment data was encouraging, the number of people in Florida’s labor force actually fell during the first three months of this year.
That was the first time the labor force had contracted for three consecutive months in at least 30 years, Lafakis said. So, more unemployed Floridians seem to be giving up looking for work and dropping out of the labor market, he said.
Lafakis estimates unemployment in Florida will top out at 11.4 percent in spring 2010 before starting to decline.
Copyright © 2009 Tampa Tribune,
No comments:
Post a Comment