Florida Summary
tanks. They can also suppress consumer confidence, another channel through which high gasoline prices can reduce consumer spending. Despite this energy wildcard, retail sales in Florida will grow at 5.67% in 2012. Once the labor market has fully cleared the starting gate, it’s still admittedly long path to recovery, retail spending will continue to grow. We expect retail sales to expand an average of 4.5% in 2012-2015. The average growth rate of retail sales will be nearly 5.4% during the 2012-2014 time frames. Although retail sales growth is not expected to reach the levels experienced during the height of the housing and economic boom, it should continue to help to partially alleviate the budget woes in Tallahassee in 2012 and 2013. As the economy continues to grow, consumers’ pentup demand and replacement needs for automobiles and light trucks continues to be released. 2010 was the start of a six year period of growth in the number of new passenger car and truck registrations in Florida. Growth will be robust during 2012-2015, averaging nearly 11%. In 2015, registrations will reach 1.34 million, representing a 192% increase from the 2009 nadir, but still not reaching the peak level of registrations during the height of the housing boom.
Employm e n t Overall payroll employment in the state grew 1.1% for 2011. This was the first year of growth after three long years of payroll contraction. Payroll job growth appears to have taken root in 2011 and growth has continued into 2012. These roots are not yet deep enough to inspire that Florida’s jobs tree is sturdy. Job growth has been tepid and wobbly in the first half of 2012 but it should gain some momentum in the second half. In 2013 job growth versus a year ago is expected to come in at 1.9%. This year will also mark the first time since 2006 that job growth in Florida exceeds the national rate of job growth. Payroll job growth will hover around this rate in 2014 but will accelerate to 2.4% in 2015. The beleaguered Construction sector still has the rest 8
Florida & Metro Forecast - July 2012
of this year with year over year job losses before it too joins in the labor market’s recovery, the final private sector to do so. This sector has been shedding jobs profusely after peaking during the housing boom – 384 thousand jobs to date -and it will be six straight years of job losses before the job recovery in the construction sector gets underway.
Job growth will return to the Construction sector in the 1st quarter of 2013. Job growth rates are expected to surge from -2.9% in 2012 to 3.7% in 2013, 10.4% in 2014, and to an eye-popping 14.3% in 2015. These yearly growth rates yield an average growth rate of 6.1% over 2012-2015. These growth rates at first glance appear to be quite large but are being calculated from a dramatically lower base of employment in the sector. By the end of 2015, employment in this sector should be back at levels previously reached in 1997. It will be 2031 before employment in the Construction sector returns to its pre-recession, pre-housing crisis peak levels.
After the Construction sector’s phoenix display, the Professional and Business Services sector will be the state’s fastest growing sector through 2015. Job growth in this sector is expected to lead the state averaging 4.1% during 2012-2015. Job gains have been heaviest in the employment services segment as businesses take this intermediate step to hiring their own employees. By the fourth quarter of 2012 job growth in the sector will be 2.2%. For the full year, 2012 will see job growth at 2.0% and it will accelerate and reach 4.4% in 2013, 4.1% in 2014, and 5.8% in 2015. This sector will recover quickly and will get back to pre-recession peak levels of employment before the end of the 3rd quarter of 2014.
The Information sector shed jobs through most of 2011. Employment stabilized, but growth has stagnated in 2012 thus far, though it is expected to expand in the 2nd half of 2012. Structural changes in this industry since the bursting of the dot com bubble, fueled by technological evolution in the publishing, news, and telecommunications, have resulted in a long downward trend in the sector.
Job growth should return to the Information sector year over year in 2012 and this may mark the beginning of a reversal of that downward trend. Job growth