At the end of 2010 Florida’s economic outlook is still uncertain. The number of jobs increased just slightly in 2010, growing by 0.6% for an addition of 43,500 jobs. However there are still over 1.1 million people unemployed in the state. This means that for every job that was added, there are still 25 people for whom there was no job. In addition the year ended with a 0.2% decline in employment from November to December.
This recession has been characterized by extremely high long-term unemploy-ment. The average length of unemploy-ment in the U.S. in December of 2010 was 34 weeks and over 40% have been unemployed for 27 weeks or longer, the highest percent on record. In Florida during 2010 over one-third of the un-employed had been out of work for longer than a year, and nearly half were unemployed for at least 6 months.
