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Florida continues to add jobs

Construction falters and Florida is no longer No. 1 in job creation.

By CHRISTINA REXRODE
Published April 21, 2007

Just as Coca-Cola Enterprises this week said it will hire another 200 people in Brandon, Home Depot laid off about 10 people in its Tampa At-Home Services unit because of declining sales of windows, roofing and siding work.

Jobs come and go, but new federal and state numbers released Friday show Florida in the month of March continued to add new jobs -- 16,400 statewide. Even though the state's pace of job growth is slowing, Florida still added more jobs last month than any other state but California.

Not all industries fared well. For example, the bottom finally fell out for Florida's construction workers.

After months of tepid job creation, construction employment moved into negative territory in March. The sector lost 3,000 jobs over the year, according to data released Friday by the state Agency for Workforce Innovation. That's a decline of 0.5 percent -- and quite a different tune from the construction industry's peak September 2005 performance, when it added jobs at a rate of 14.3 percent.

It's the first time the construction industry has lost jobs on an annual basis since July 2002.

Jim Ressel, the owner of Ressel Construction Co. in Brooksville, said his seven-employee company has been cushioned from the effects of the building bust because it builds homes only after lining up buyers.

"I think the bigger builders, they flooded the market with all the spec homes," Ressel said, "and now they're having to get rid of all of those first."

But construction's lackluster performance couldn't cancel the state's overall job gains over the past 12 months. Florida was a distant third in over-the-year job creation, adding 122,600 positions. According to data released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, California added 250,200 while Texas gained 225,500.

And even though 122,600 new jobs sounds good, consider: Until a few months ago, Florida had consistently been No. 1 in job creation for about four years.

Also, Florida's new jobs amounted to a percentage gain of only about 1.5 percent, or one-tenth of a percentage point above the national average. Utah, on the other hand, created jobs at a brisk rate of 4.6 percent. Other big winners, albeit states with smaller populations, included Wyoming at 4.4 percent, and Arizona at 3.7 percent.

As for where Florida's new jobs came from: Together, professional and business services and education and health services accounted for 49 percent of the state's job creation.

Rebecca Rust of the Agency for Workforce Innovation said at a business growth forum in Tampa this week that the growth of professional and business services is largely due to an increase of PEOs, or professional employer organizations, which do human resources work for other companies.

One Clearwater PEO business called FrankCrum racked up $1.2-billion in revenue last year, making it one of the largest private companies in the bay area.

Besides construction, the big losers in Florida in March were manufacturing and information. Manufacturing lost 9,200 jobs over the year, for a 2.3 percent decline, and information lost 700 jobs, for a 0.4 percent decline. The state blamed these declines on weaknesses in Internet service providers, telecommunications, and computer and electronic product manufacturing.

But Ricardo Lasa, who owns Web Piston in Tampa, said there is plenty of demand for software analysts, designers and developers. The job loss, he said, is probably coming from the hardware niche.

The state unemployment rate remained at 3.3 percent, the lowest of the 10 most populous states. And it's well below the national average of 4.4 percent.

Christina Rexrode can be reached at (727) 893-8318 or crexrode@sptimes.com.

[Last modified April 21, 2007, 07:59:02]