GAINESVILLE, Fla., May 27 (AScribe Newswire) -- Tax stimulus checks failed to blunt the damaging effects of record gas prices and rising debt on Florida's consumer confidence in May, causing it to drop one point to 65 and hit a new 16-year record low, according to the latest statistics from the University of Florida.
Until now, last month's reading had been consumer confidence's lowest level since December 1991, when the index fell to 64 and reached its all-time low, said Chris McCarty, director of UF's Survey Research Center at the Bureau of Economic and Business Research.
Government jobs are less secure in Southwest Florida as counties, schools and cities in Charlotte, Manatee and Sarasota counties trim their budgets by cutting staff.
In a field generally considered stable, hundreds of government workers here are losing their jobs or taking on more duties to make up for reductions in staff.
The reductions demonstrate the downside of Florida's real estate and construction boom, which boosted government payrolls through an influx of property tax revenues.
NEW YORK - Florida hasn't been hit by a major hurricane since Wilma slammed ashore in October 2005. But at least one publisher believes newspapers in the Sunshine State might be better off if one had. "Don't get me wrong," says Steve Erlanger, "I hope I never see another hurricane again. But we had four hurricanes in a matter of two years, and it brought in billions of dollars in spending money. People had $21,000 worth of damage, and got $100,000 checks. And they spent it."
Florida is not as popular as it used to be among whites who are not Hispanic, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report released today.
Analysts say the sluggish economy, rise in the cost of living and housing market slowdown are partly behind the falling numbers.
"It's certainly true that the non-Hispanic white population in Florida is declining and will continue to decline," said Stan Smith, director of the Bureau of Economic Business Research at the University of Florida.
But Smith said one has to be cautious about over-emphasizing year-to-year changes.
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The bursting of Florida’s housing bubble and overall economy has also let the air out of the state’s famed population growth, which has shrunk to its lowest levels in three decades, according to the latest projections from the University of Florida.
OCALA - To call Vicky Gonzalez an optimist is one serious understatement.
The general manager of Ocala Volvo and Gainesville Volvo has no use for negative economic news.
"We can control our own destiny," she said. "Things are great in our community."
Gonzalez wants to declare Ocala "recession-proof." But that might not be realistic, said David Denslow, research economist at the University of Florida's Bureau of Business and Economic Research.
Torrid population growth rates in Sun Belt metropolitan areas from Florida to Arizona, Nevada and California have slowed amid a severe downturn in the nation's housing market, according to a USA TODAY analysis of Census Bureau data released today.
"It's really a slowdown in places with superheated housing markets that were almost out of control in terms of their growth," says William Frey, demographer at the Brookings Institution. "It reflects the rapid response to angst of getting financing in those areas. People are becoming much more risk-averse, much more conservative about moving."
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Passage of the national economic stimulus package and state property tax amendment helped boost Florida’s consumer confidence by four points to 74 in February after last month’s decline to its lowest level in 16 years, a new University of Florida study reports.
