Rick Scott rejects claims that job growth is predominately in low-wage sectors

Rick Scott enjoyed the fruits of the Job Grow

In St. Augustine Friday, Gov. Rick Scott promoted the latest jobs numbers.

“The private sector,” said Scott, “has created 26,000 new jobs. We have added 211,000 jobs in the last 12 months … almost 1.6 million private sector jobs” in the last 7½ years.

Noting that unemployment is now 3.7 percent, Scott said  Florida’s job growth rate and labor force rate is “fastest in the nation.”

Scott added, in the media availability, that this is a “great month … we’re growing this state through growing our economy.”

Cissy Proctor, executive director of Florida’s Department of Economic Opportunity, echoed the Governor’s sentiments, lauding “his focus and his strategic investments in companies and diversification” that ensure a “competitive business environment.”

What is left unsaid in these jobs announcements is the types of jobs created.

As the Florida Times-Union noted recently, half of those jobs created pay less than $10 an hour. And, despite the jobs created, nearly half of Florida’s 67 counties lag below the employment levels they had before the recession a decade ago.

Three million Floridians are in poverty, with wages 13 percent below the national average, per the T-U. Meanwhile, cities across Florida see spiking rents.

We asked Scott about these criticisms, which seemingly cast a pall on the rosy picture the numbers create.

Scott noted that when he was elected, “there weren’t jobs that were helping any family,” given that the state had lost “842,000 jobs the four years before I got elected.”

“Now,” Scott said, “we are seeing job growth month after month after month. Our wages are going up faster than the national numbers. People are continuing to come to our state because they have the opportunity to live the dream of this country right here in Florida.”

“We have good paying jobs all across our state,” Scott added. “This state is growing really well.”

In terms of metropolitan job creation, Orlando leads with 53,000 new jobs in the past year, followed by Tampa with 31,000, and Miami with 27,000.