Workforce – Employees discussing in an office – Courtesy: Shutterstock – Image by GaudiLab
For the first time in 2022, Florida’s economic development caused the Sunshine State to surpass New York in terms of the number of employed workers at the end of the year.
According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) that was made public this week, Florida had 9.669 million employed people in December 2022, compared to 9.661 million in New York. The workforce in Florida surpassed that of New York for the first time since the BLS started using this data set in 1982.
A spokesman for Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis told FOX Business, “As Governor DeSantis said in his second inaugural speech, ‘It is often said that our federalist constitutional system — with fifty states able to pursue their own unique policies — represents a laboratory of democracy.’ Florida has exemplified the successful example of freedom, and our success is revealed in metrics like this.”
The representative also cited statistics showing that Florida has led the nation in the creation of new businesses, with over 1.7 million done so since January 2020, and that more than a third of them were started in just 2022.
According to BLS data, early in 2020, before the COVID-19 epidemic, New York had around 9.8 million jobs versus Florida’s 9.1 million.
From April to July 2020, the workforces of the two states were almost equal as both were regaining the employment lost during the initial economic slump brought on by pandemic restrictions.
By the fall of 2020, New York had restored enough jobs to create a gap between it and Florida of about 300,000 jobs.
But Florida started to close that deficit, bringing it down to 100,000 jobs for most of 2022 from an initial estimate of 200,000 jobs. Florida concluded the year with a greater workforce than the Empire State for the first time ever after passing the Empire State by less than 8,000 jobs by the conclusion of the year.
Another significant event occurred in Florida last year when the state’s workforce surpassed its pre-pandemic levels and reached 9.2 million employees. For comparison, according to BLS data from December, New York’s workforce was around 200,000 jobs below its pre-pandemic level.
An inflow of new citizens who have come to the state in the last year has fueled Florida’s economic boom.
For the first time since 1957, according to Census Bureau data released in December, Florida was the state with the greatest population growth in the nation.
From 2021 to 2022, Florida’s population increased by 416,754 people, or 1.9 percent, to reach more than 22.2 million.
Between 2021 and 2022, New York saw the biggest population fall among all 50 states, losing 180,341 people (or 0.9 percent of its total population) to reach roughly 19.6 million.
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Mike has more than 30 years of experience in marketing and public relations. He once owned his own agency and has worked with some of the largest brands in the world.
