Miami-Dade Jobs Picture Worse than Detroit?

Looking through Tuesday's (4-19) Labor Department jobs report, the unemployment picture for the Miami-Dade area of Florida appears more dire than that of even Detroit. The print media grabs that data and runs up stories about it being harder to find a job in Miami now than even in the Detroit.

How could that be?      After all, in March 2006, Michigan’s unemployment rate stood at 6.8 percent while Florida’s was less than half that at 3.1 percent.

Well, it's all there in the numbers folks, if you accept those as declared without review. The States with the highest unemployment rates in Tuesday’s Labor Department report are — California, Florida and Nevada. Detroit comes in at a rate of 11.1 percent, down from 14.5 percent a year earlier. Miami on the other hand is reported at 12.9 percent with a reported increase in unemployment from 12.5 percent a year ago. Motor City auto sales stats have influenced the reports having rebounded since they collapsed during the financial meltdown of 2008. On Tuesday, J.D. Power reported that car sales hit 11.1 million in April, almost 2 million higher than a year ago. Also, on the real estate front, the Federal Housing Finance Agency shows Detroit had a 25-point negative swing on its housing price index since 2000, while Miami-Dade was a much worse 55-point downward swing.

Keep in mind that the unemployment rate is is not as definitive as it might sound. Wouldn't it be much easier for us if a person was considered employed simply by the fact of them having a job? Instead, the powers that be throw in complications galore. For example: (1) A person who loses a 40 hour per week job, but works for one hour mowing a lawn for pay is classified as employed. (2) A person who simply expresses interest in having a job is classified as unemployed, while discouraged workers" who have lost a job, but do not make an effort to find a new job in a given week are not classified as unemployed or even as in the labor force.

One of the main reasons that Detroit’s unemployment rate went down is because its labor pool dropped, too. That is, the number of people either looking for a job or working declined from a year ago — down 2.8 percent. Hiring only went up 1 percent. That’s usually not a good sign, suggesting either people are moving out of town or are so discouraged by the hiring climate they’ve given up looking.

In Miami-Dade, though, the labor pool grew 1.1 percent in a year, while hiring went up 3.3 percent. That’s an encouraging trend when both measures increase, but the combination makes it harder to lower the unemployment rate.