A report issued yesterday by the Pew Center on the States finds Florida as among the worst states in the nation in terms of its economy.
The report, called "Beyond California: States in Fiscal Peril" notes that what many of us have been recognizing day by day, month by month – Florida is not the state it was just a few years ago.
Among the lowlights:
– In 2006 the state's job market was one of the strongest – now it's the 8th worst.
– Population. For the first part of this decade, we all heard the statistics (wasn't it, 'there's a thousand new people a day moving to Florida"?). Now deal with these stats: From April of '08 to April of '09, the state's population dropped by 58,00o.
– And in '05 Florida ranked 2nd in economic growth. In '08? 48th.
And though a lot of folks (particularly Republicans) love to bash California and its fiscal problems, Moody's Economy.com says that Florida's housing market is in worse shape than the Golden State.
I would link to the report (pewcenterforthestates.org), but unfortunately the site isn't coming up at all this morning, for whatever reason. You can find a solid report on it in today's Tampa Tribune.
This article appears in Nov 11-17, 2009.