[Spring Hillian]

I really don't understand why some people on this forum are hung up on the figure of $8.00 an hour being an average wage in Florida. Get with the times already! $8.00 is only 55 cents above the state's minimum wage. If you don't have any skills or experience then you can expect to earn $8.00 an hour. Otherwise, you are probably in the median wage level of about $14.00 an hour.

Here are the State's figures. Not some imaginary figure, but based on real wages for real jobs in the real world.

Occupational & Employment Statistics: Estimate Delivery System

[Flize]

People there are disgusting.Florida begins to rebound, creates many jobs, and you complain ? So pitiful...Normal people would say "great, let's hope it's a work in progress".I'm happy my friends and family aren't like you

[Spring Hillian]

And why do 1,000 people a day relocate to Florida?

Originally Posted by Mike1306

I have heard many times in this thread about the $8 an hour jobs yet see nothing showing where this information is coming from.
If GA and LA have all these higher paying jobs than Florida then how come the per capita income is higher in Florida than both those other states.

[TylerJAX]

To enjoy some sunshine before they die.

[seain dublin]

Originally Posted by Spring Hillian

And why do 1,000 people a day relocate to Florida?

And what is good about that? How many come with no jobs and not enough savings?

[Spring Hillian]

Originally Posted by seain dublin

And what is good about that? How many come with no jobs and not enough savings?

Probably a lot less than you think. People do think and plan their relocation, in most cases, and in many cases situations are so bad where they were that it can't get much worse. Jobs are there, if you have a skill or knowledge and experience that is needed, especially in the medical field. It's not that there aren't jobs. Take a look at Monster.Com, Career Builder.Com, EmployFlorida.Com, Indeed.Com.
Not everybody has the skill set of a fast food worker in this country.

If I moved to NYC, LA, Houston, Chicago, San Francisco or Anywhere U.S.A. tomorrow I am sure I'd be hard pressed to find a job anywhere that would provide me with a living to pay the rent, buy food, pay the utilities much less worry about any of the normal extras in life.

Lots of people work 2 jobs, or a full time and a part time job just like they have been doing for decades. It's not a new concept. Not everybody is going to relocate, land a job, buy a house, a new car and new furniture.
They are going to do with what they have and try to recover from any misfortunes that beset them.

And about those food stamp users you often mention: Do you have any idea how many millions of Americans are on SNAP? Its about 40 million and most of them ARE NOT in Florida. The odds of running into a food stamp recipient anywhere in this country are very good. Don't look down on them. It is not a sin, its a government program to keep people alive. There are many people in this nation struggling to make a living, but they do the best they can with the abilities they have and hopefully move up the ladder of life as they go along. In the meantime, the U.S. has the ability to provide some safety net for those who need it and there are 40 million of them. I would hope so as the U.S.A. has been supporting the rest of the world for 50 years.

This country is in bad shape, economically, politically and morally. In fact the whole world is. If you watch the re-runs of "All in the Family" from the middle 1970's the problems then are the same problems we face today. Nothing has changed in over 40 years! Its only gotten worse.

As far as NASA goes, NASA has been a government agency that has outspent itself. It is privatizing. The same jobs will be available in the private sector now instead of the Government sector. Kennedy Space Center is not shutting down. There will be replacement programs for the "space shuttle" which long ago outlived its usefulness, but the government has done everything they could to keep it going. There has been and always will be better ways to perform their missions. Aeronautics will be there but it won't be a government job with all the benefits and perks and wild budgets. It will be private companies running the show doing it for a profit instead of running it into the ground on a deficit as they have been doing for decades.

Most important, anyone who thinks that Florida is some sort of begotten wasteland hasn't looked at the rest of the country or simply does not want to realize that things are tough all over. Unemployment, poverty, economic disaster, crime, high food costs, etc are in every state, virtually every country in the world, but some will continue to blame "Florida" for failure.
The state hasn't failed. It's just a wheel in the big cog. Florida was never a place where people go to work in suits and ties and sit behind desks. Florida has never been a major manufacturing state. Florida has been a place where hard labor and sacrifice has been the lifeblood. Seems in the past 20 years or so every one who relocated from a big city expects Florida to provide office towers, white collar jobs, fine dining, Broadway shows, and all the comforts of home. It does not work that way. Florida has been and still is a major agricultural state, not a place filled with office towers and limos. Tourism, of course, is still a major industry here. It has been that way for well over 100 years. Millions have relocated here for the lifestyle and that lifestyle brings with it service oriented jobs for the service oriented economy that has grown around the tourist industry and the people relocating here.

I don't see why people expect so much from this state. If they were so happy with the place they were they should have stayed there instead of coming here to do nothing but complain that it's too hot, has too many bugs et al.

I hope the Mayans and the Hopi's are correct in their predictions that the world we live in now is going to be reset because this one is hopeless and most of the people in it have become morally corrupt with no concern for their fellow humans, their neighbors or their friends.

So for those who think FL is so lousy, the same roads that got them and their stuff here can get them out of here. Buy the boxes, rent the truck, pack it up. If as claimed the salaries are so much better elsewhere, the food is cheaper, the weather is better, the supermarkets are better, the schools are better, the government is better, the crime is lower etc etc
why are they wasting their time here? It is obvious that Florida is holding back their lives and I don't see why anyone would want to do that when such wonderful opportunities exist elsewhere. If I knew of a place that would give me an answer to all the problems I'd walk there with a suitcase in my hand and leave it all behind because it is so much better "there". It should be really easy to get it going again, right?

Originally Posted by seain dublin

And what is good about that? How many come with no jobs and not enough savings?

[Spring Hillian]

According to your heading, you are in New Jersey. That would be the last place on the planet I would ever want to be.

Originally Posted by TylerJAX

To enjoy some sunshine before they die.

[Spring Hillian]

Why does anyone expect Florida to have IT, manufacturing and finance?

It never did. But because people who relocated here want it that way, it should be?

I don't think so.

Originally Posted by MovedfromFL

It's worse than a wash, because like I said in my prior post, the job growth as been in leisure and hospitality, while the job losses continue to mount in sectors like IT, manufacturing, and finance.

Let's see... gain two jobs paying $8.00 a hour and lose one paying $55,000/year. Are we better now?

[ozlo]

Has anyone ever noticed how the median income in Florida has always seemed to be higher than one would think? Yet how many people do you know who have had to take major paycuts just to get a job, any job, and are making less than they were 10 years ago....20 years ago..? I have a feeling the income median and average are thrown way off because we have so many doctors here. It is basically the one and only growing industry here, and along with a Walgreens and CVS at every intersection we have matching clusters of doctors offices every other block in every non-residential area you drive by. This makes sense when you take into account the staggering number of seniors down here, so it only makes sense that a huge portion of higher paid folks (doctors) combine with the lower pay of most other people to create a higher median income than you would think!

And this does not even include the highly paid accident attorneys who advertise on every other billboard you see!

At any rate, I wonder how many of these 700,000 new jobs we have coming will actually be positions for inmates making $0.18/hour in state prisons the governor wants to privatize. *gasp* *shock* Yes, it does happen and is happening, slaves in prisons in the US are making pennies per hour.

[ferret111]

Originally Posted by seain dublin

FL is the only state I have ever lived in where I see so many middle aged people working jobs that in other parts of the country are done by teenagers and college kids.

This is a good point. You don't see too many kids working in traditionally teenager-oriented jobs like fast food anymore. Instead, you see a lot of people working there who have to work there to support their families. I was up in West Virginia a few months ago and I was surprised to see how over half of the employees in fast food and mall-related business were teenagers.