Forget the latest, disappointing unemployment report; jobs are growing much quicker than the commonly cited numbers show. Florida is in great shape. And "offshoring" of U.S. jobs is a good, natural economic trend.
When SunTrust chief economist Gregory Miller came to town last week from the bank's Atlanta headquarters, he brought with him plenty of contrarian insights into the U.S. labor market.
For one, Miller attaches little value to the latest payroll survey indicating slow job growth after the country has lost 750,000 jobs the past two years. The survey historically has been weighted to track bigger companies, including those most likely to impose mass layoffs.
The preferable measurement, Miller said, is the government's more expansive household survey that tracks startups, small businesses and consultants. That shows the work force growing by 2.3-million the past two years, or three jobs created for every one the payroll survey indicates has been lost.
Miller also discounts offshoring - the shift of U.S. jobs oversees - as overblown and a necessary part of the business cycle. Many of the offshored jobs were call center employees and computer programmers. The new U.S. jobs that have been created in their stead, he said, are in legal services, scientific research, management and technical consulting, and they pay better.
"We're winning the wage battle; we're not losing it," he said.
And as for that persistent knock that Florida is stuck in a mire of low-paying jobs and low-quality public education, Miller counters that a renaissance is under way.
Statewide education is improving, he said, while jobs that pay better than the call centers and theme parks are taking hold. Defense contract spending, research and higher-paying business services jobs in accounting and law are on the upswing in Florida as the southward migration continues.
"The South," Miller says, "could be on the verge of another Golden Age."
