The Middle Class Getting Poorer in Florida

Interest.com released an affordability study to examine housing markets. Tampa's medium income is $45,880. Tampa rated a D+ in paycheck power in 2012, 2013 and 2014. Tampa is the lowest rated city in the study. Miami is the second lowest rating city for medium income.

The Tampa Bay Times has an infographic of the jobs Gov. Rick Scott promised to deliver from giving companies tax incentives. Colt's Manufacturing currently has no people in their manufacturing building. Global Voter Solutions has declared bankruptcy. GVS was involved in a scandal using illegal voting software. Several states rejected the faulty Diebold machines GVS used.

Evolution was given a $100,000 tax credit from the state of Florida. Evolution has produced zero jobs in Florida. The list goes on.

Income inequality is increasing in Florida. All the gains from 2009 to 2011 went to the top 1 percent in Florida.

The report found Florida is one of 26 states in which all income growth from 2009 to 2011 went to the top 1 percent. While the average income of the top 1 percent in Florida rose 9.2 percent in that period, the remaining 99 percent saw its average income fall 2.4 percent. Robert Trigaux reports:

Just to break into the 1 percent bracket in Florida requires an annual income of $336,935. To enter the more elite 0.1 percent in Florida requires an income of $8,659,187.

Bottom line? In the Florida economy, the report says, the top 1 percent average of $1.14 million income is 32.2 times greater than that of the other 99 percent. Only Fortune 500-rich New York and Connecticut, home to many Wall Streeters and other highly paid workers, reported a larger disparity in income ratio.

This thread isn't going to change with the McJobs in Florida anytime soon.

Rick Scott: Job Killer

Florida Senate Democratic Leader Nan Rich is keeping count of how many jobs Gov. Rick Scott has lost since assuming office.

“Start with the 13,000 state employees, add that to about 30,000 linked with the high speed rail projects, then thousands of teachers, police, fire and other government employees as the massive cuts trickle down.” Rich suggested there should be a new refrain for Scott’s 7-7-7 plan during his campaign, in which he promised to seven steps would create 700,000 new jobs in seven years. “We’re kind of estimating that in seven weeks in seven steps, the governor has managed to lose just under seven percent of the 700,000 jobs that he promised over the seven years.”

At this rate, Rick Scott's 2014 campaign motto will be: "Let's get unemployed."

House Republicans Jobs Plan

John Boehner unveils his jobs program.

House Speaker John Boehner said Tuesday that the GOP plans to "get serious" about government spending, and if that means eliminating government jobs, "so be it."

The Ohio Republican said he does not care if federal employees lose their jobs as a result of the GOP plan to reduce government spending by $60 billion compared to last year.

Republicans love to say how much they hate government employees. The irony is Boehner and other elected Republicans are government employees. Boehner has run 10 times for his House seat. Boehner has no problem with his government employment. As for school teachers, fire fighters and police officers, Boehners offers up a big fuck you.

November's job numbers: It's worse than you think

[Crossposted from Sugar Land is Dreaming]

Over at my other blogging home, Comments From Left Field, Macswain posted about November's job losses... "A Kick to the Gut":

The Bureau of Labor's monthly job report is out and its filled with bad news. From the payroll report (the best indicator of labor health, in my opinion), we get the news that the economy dropped 533,000 jobs in November, bringing the total for the year to a loss of 1.9 million jobs. That's the biggest one-month decline in nearly 34 years...

Mac has more to say and you should definitely read the whole post.

Despite how bad this news it, it gets worse. There's one point which cannot be overstated: During the holiday season, retail is supposed to gain jobs. Lots of them. All those temporary retail holiday positions traditionally added during November and December are supposed to swell employment numbers. But this year, even those temporary positions don't exist as retail joins all the other economic sectors dropping employment like its a hot potato. So to hear that November experienced not only job losses but, as Macswain said, "the biggest one-month decline [of jobs] in nearly 34 years," is more alarming to hear about November then, say, January or February when all of those temporary retail positions disappear -- this makes half a million jobs lost in November outright shocking. As I previously mentioned, this cannot be overstated.

I'm also forced to file this economic news under the "I hate it when I'm right" category. A month ago, I said this on the topic:

Placing this in larger context, we’re less than two weeks away from the start of Christmas shopping season — the time when retail businesses earn the majority of their profits. We could be seeing desperation from businesses here: Circuit City can’t keep many stores open despite the profit to be made in a couple weeks, and DHL can’t keep shipping despite the Christmas gift packages that will surely flood the market. Or are the upcoming retail sales projections from these companies just so weak that they don’t see enough demand to justify maintaining full time operations? Is this desperation or foreshadowing?

The case for foreshadowing is grim but accurate. The US economy shed 1.2 million jobs this year. A real test will be November’s job growth (or lack thereof) numbers — will they receive a bounce from retail’s traditional hiring of temporary labor for the holiday season… Or is retail not hiring right now? We’ll know in December.

Indeed, now we do know. The economic forecasts that retail stores had at the beginning of November must have been horrible; we’re seeing that reflected in today's November job numbers.

One now wonders just how big of a mess faces Obama on January 20th.