Miami-Dade Struggling With Unemployment
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (CBSMiami) – Florida's overall jobless numbers continued to follow national trends in February, dropping to 9.4 percent. It's the lowest unemployment has been since February 2009, right before jobs began disappearing due to the Great Recession.
According to state numbers, the unemployment rate meant 869,000 workers in the state of Florida were looking for jobs.
Locally, Broward County continued to outpace the state. In February, Broward's unemployment rate dropped from 8.2 percent to 7.9 percent. That means out of a workforce of 985,573, just 77,592 people in the county were without work.
In Miami-Dade County, the numbers were a little worse with the unemployment rate standing at 9.7 percent. Miami-Dade's workforce is larger than Broward, 1.29 million, and the unemployment rate translated to 125,427 workers on unemployment insurance in February, or roughly 15 percent of the state's total unemployed workers.
Put another way, if you drop Miami-Dade County's numbers from the overall state numbers, the unemployment rate in Florida would be 7.9 percent.
Monroe County again had the best unemployment rate in the state at just 5.4 percent, or roughly 2,532 people in the Keys on unemployment insurance.
But, the numbers haven't been broken down to see how unemployment law changes have affected the jobless numbers. The state cut benefit weeks last year and it's unknown how those cuts are impacting the unemployment rate which only measures those qualifying for unemployment.
