With Labor Day behind us, millions of Floridians are returning to work today--but taking home slimmer paychecks than in previous years, according to a new report.
Over the holiday weekend, Florida International University's Research Institute on Social and Economic Policy released its annual State of Working Florida report. The CliffsNotes version is this: Florida's typical worker earns about $1,000 less today than in 2010.
This is the fifth consecutive Labor Day in which Florida lags behind other states in economic recovery. Why so sluggish? About 25 percent of Floridians work in tourism or retail trade--industries that are growing but create mostly low-wage jobs, the report said.
“We are in a deeper hole than other states,” said Sean Snaith, director of the Institute for Economic Competitiveness at the University of Central Florida, according to the online newspaper Florida Today. “I don’t think there’s any way of describing the recovery in Florida as anything but sub-par. The national recovery hasn’t been overwhelming, either.”
