Florida’s economy is improving little by little, according to a December report from the Florida Legislature Office of Economic and Demographic Research.
The office’s updated “Florida: An Economic Overview” in early December shows slight improvements in some key indicators over the previous report in late October.
First, a look at unemployment and jobs.
October’s unemployment rate was 10.3 percent, with 955,000 people out of work and with seven states showing a higher rate.
That was better than September, when the unemployment rate was 10.6 percent, with 977,000 people out of work and the state tied with Mississippi for the fifth highest rate.
Both rates were lower than the highest monthly unemployment rate of 12 percent in December 2010.
Also, year-over-year, the state gained 93,900 nonfarm jobs as of October, better than the 93,500 as of September.
Also in October, 34 of the state’s 67 counties posted double-digit unemployment rates, fewer than the 41 that did so in September.
Through October, the state found that 802,800 jobs were lost since the peak of employment, down from the 817,300 in September that had been lost.
Still, the state said it would take the creation of more than a million jobs for the same percentage of the total population to be working as was the case at the peak of employment.
The office also looked at housing.
“Florida’s housing is generally improving,” it concluded from a study of total documentary stamp tax collections.
The “sales volume of existing homes and building permits are both back in positive territory, showing year-over-year growth” for calendar year 2010 over 2009.
Still, while calendar year 2010 showed the first annual increase in documentary stamp tax collections since the peak in 2005, the 2010 total was just 28.5 percent of the 2005 peak.
The documentary stamp tax is levied on documents that transfer interest in Florida real property, such as warranty deeds and quit claim deeds as well as other documents.
Regarding existing home sales, the sales level in calendar year 2010 was 70.1 percent of the 2005 peak and that has risen to 75.4 percent this year, although prices are down.
The median sales price of existing homes was $131,200 in October, a 49 percent drop from the peak of $257,800 in mid-2006.That’s an even further drop from the median sales price of $133,900 in September, which was down 48 percent from the peak.
The office’s headline about foreclosures remains the same: “Foreclosure filings remain daunting.”
For 2010, the state had the second highest number of filings in the country, at 485,286 properties, and the third highest foreclosure rate, with 5.51 percent of housing units receiving at least one filing during the year.
The state remained No. 2 for filings in the third quarter, which was July-September, as well as in October. The rate of foreclosure fell in the third quarter but rose again in October.
The foreclosure process took 169 days at the beginning of 2007 and grew to 676 days (1.8 years) in the third quarter and to almost 749 days (2.1 years) in October. Both periods were the third lengthiest in the nation.
The average delinquency at the start of foreclosures in Florida was 385 days both for July and for October.
Also, the sales mix continues to indicate lower prices.
In May, short sales and properties owned by lenders after unsuccessful foreclosure sales, called real-estate owned properties, accounted for 50.8 percent of total sales, while cash sales accounted for 36.7 percent and financed sales made up 12.5 percent.
That mix changed in September. REO and short sales grew to 52.8 percent of sales and cash sales dropped to 32.3 percent, while financed sales rose to 14.9 percent.
The REO price is nearly 40 percent lower than the average price and the short sale price is about 21 percent lower, the office reported.
On the banking side, the number of bank failures in Florida remained steady year-to-date at 12, down from 29 total in 2010 and 14 in 2009.
The other failures since 2002 were two that year, one in 2004 and two in 2008.
Looking at people, Florida’s population was almost 16 million in 2000, 18.8 million in 2010, 18.9 million this year and is forecast to reach almost 23.6 million by 2030.
Perhaps the biggest change in December from October was the headline about consumer sentiment nationwide, which the office said Florida follows.
“Perceptions Plummeted In August” in the October report was followed by “Perceptions Recovering After August” in December.
In August, consumer sentiment fell to near the lowest level of the recession and not far from the record low of 51.7 in May 1980.
The subsequent months have all shown improvement. The nation’s sentiment reached 64.1 in November, up slightly from 64 in September.
In Florida, the rate rose to 65 in November from 64 in September.
The bulk of the report remained the same as the one before it: key economic variables are down, but the Florida economy turned positive in 2010 after declining two consecutive years.
Also consistent:
• Florida’s personal income beat the national growth.
• Population growth is forecast to remain relatively flat, averaging 0.85 percent from this year to 2014, but it is expected to recover to an average of 1.1 percent from 2025-30, with 86 percent of the growth from net migration. Still, that growth rate is slower than the average 3 percent from 1970-95.
• Florida remains on track to exceed 20 million in population during 2016, surpassing New York to become the No. 3 most populous state in the country.
• Credit conditions remain tight.
And in another change, a headline from the office’s spring report, “Economy Slowly Recovering,” was revised to “Economy Very Slowly Recovering” for the fall.
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