Posted by Unemployment up sharply, Governor Crist seeks to create jobs
By
WINK News
Story Created:
Mar 10, 2010 at 8:46 PM EST
Story Updated:
Mar 10, 2010 at 10:21 PM EST
FORT MYERS, Fla. – Getting Floridians back to work brought Governor Charlie Crist to Fort Myers on Wednesday.
Crist made a series of stops across the state for a ceremonial signing of a bill that postpones payment of unemployment compensation taxes.
His visit came the same day that staggering new unemployment numbers were announced for the state: 11.9% statewide in January 2010. The jobless rate was even higher in Lee County, at 14.1% (up from 13.4% in December); 13.8% in Charlotte County, and 12.7% in collier county.
But Crist says businesses can afford to hire again, after Florida lawmakers unanimously agreed to wait two years to increase the unemployment tax.
“To save 474,000 businesses over a billion dollars in money they’d be paying in taxes, affecting 6.1 million people, that’s a great first step,” Crist said.
Critics say it delays a big problem, but many of the unemployed in southwest Florida say they just want to work.
“We were hiring up until September and all of a sudden the bottom fell out,” said Jeremiah Corbitt, out of work for the last six months after being cut from a job in the construction industry. On top of the difficulty in finding work, now he’s also facing with problems with his unemployment claims.
“I’m caught in this system where everything in the future is just a big question mark,” Corbitt said.
Corbitt is one of the nearly 70,000 people unemployed in Southwest Florida in the latest numbers that run through January, after holiday jobs ran out. Companies in health and hospitality have been hiring since, but career advisors say its not enough.
“A lot of those numbers don’t make a dent in the unemployment rate because so many people are affected,” said Barbara Hartman with the Fort Myers office of the Agency for Workforce Innovation.
The delay in the unemployment tax only lasts until 2012, when the planned increase will kick in. Crist says the state is also accepting $200 million new federal dollars to create up to 25,000 additional jobs. He says he’s also like to see additional cuts to help Floridians.
“I’m advocating another $100 million dollar tax cut this year and a reduction in the corporate income tax in Florida, but also the back-to-school sales tax holiday, to reignite that so when families are going back to school for their children, they have chance to get the necessities they need without paying any taxes at all,” Crist said. “All of these things will add up.”
Crist’s chief rival for the GOP Senate nomination, former House Speaker Marco Rubio, says the high unemployment numbers only show that Crist’s policies and support of the federal stimulus failed.
Many of the unemployed, like Jeremiah Corbitt, are willing to take any job, just to get a paycheck again.
“Anything right now, its all about survival right now. It’s all about dropping the pride, getting the bills paid,” Corbitt said.
