Flagler County’s unemployment rate edged back below 4 percent for the first time in six months, at 3.8 percent, as a couple hundred people gained jobs and the number of unemployed residents fell by 300. But Flagler County’s labor force again shrank, as it has most months for more than a year, to 50,849.
The labor force is at its lowest level since February 2023, when it was 50,773 and rising. It peaked at 52,293 in September 2023, according to the Florida Department of Commerce, and has declined since. The labor force is an important economic indicator to schools and the public school district, who depend on working-age families with children to sustain or increase their enrollment.
Enrollment in Flagler County schools has been stagnant for a decade and a half despite a substantial increase in the population, including working-age residents, as students have been enrolled in private and home school in increasingly large numbers, and more so in the last two years as families take advantage of an $8,000-per-student per-year state subsidy to pay for private, religious or home school. A continued reduction in the county’s labor force does not help the district’s enrollment trends.
Labor force figures have not affected the local housing market, which for the past decade has been powered by older adults and retirees: people 65 and over make up nearly 32 percent of the county’s population. The local housing market had cooled over the last few months, but it rebounded a little in December (compared with the previous three months), with 234 closings on single-family homes, matching the year’s average for monthly home sales. Last month, the number of home sales had fallen to the lowest level in almost seven years.
The Flagler County Association of Realtors reported today that new home sales were driven by a spike in cash sales, usually a reflection of retirees selling homes elsewhere and moving to Flagler County. The median sale price, flat since mid-2022, edged slightly up to $387,495, which means that half the homes that sold did so at more than that price, and half sold for less. The median figure is more reflective of the mid-point in any calculation since it is not disproportionately skewed by the highest or lowest figures in the total.
The median time for a house to sell, at 114 days, remains high, and higher than it’s been in almost a year even as new listings have declined to just over 200 in the county, and the overall inventory of single-family houses, which had been rising steadily for almost two years, posted a slight decline, to 1,262 houses. Closed sales in the condo market continue at a steady 537 for the year, compared to 562 last year, and a median price of $305,000, slightly down from last year’s $316,000. It’s a similar story with town houses, with 537 closed sales this year, and a median price of $278,000.
Florida’s unemployment rate in December was 3.4 percent, the same as in November, with 377,000 Floridians officially out of work, though the number is deceiving: the state records only those Floridians who qualify for the 12 weeks of unemployment checks, and who fulfill all requirements to qualify, including showing proof that they have looked for and applied for several jobs in the previous weeks. Once the unemployed run out of benefits, they are no longer counted among the unemployed. At 12 weeks, Florida has the stingiest benefit period for the unemployed, whose checks, maxing out at $275 a week, are also among the lowest in the nation.
The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics tabulates the Alternative Measure of Labor Utilization, the so-called U-6 rate, which includes, in addition to the official unemployment rate, the rate for discouraged workers, workers barely attached to the labor force, and workers employed part-time because they could not find full-time work. By that calculation, Florida’s unemployment and under-employment rate is 6.3 percent. The national average is 7.4 percent.
Florida recorded 10 million people with jobs last month, and a net gain of 18,000 jobs, for a net gain of 149,000 this year. Industries gaining the most jobs over the year included education and health services (30,900 jobs), leisure and hospitality (29,500), construction (28,900), and government (25,100).
Consumer confidence among Floridians soared in December to 86.4, its highest level in more than four years, according to the University of Florida’s Bureau of Economic and Business Research. That was a jump of 5 points from a revised figure of 81.4 in November. National consumer confidence rose 2.2 points
“As the year ends, Florida’s consumer sentiment has seen a notable positive shift, rising nine points in the last couple of months,” says Hector Sandoval, director of the Economic Analysis Program at UF’s Bureau. “Notably, all three forward-looking components of the index are at their highest levels in nearly five years. The previous highs for each component were recorded in February 2020, just before the pandemic began. At that time, Florida’s unemployment rate was nearing historically low levels, and consumer sentiment was at its highest point in nearly two decades.” Donald Trump inherited an economy that had posted 48 straight months of job growth.
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