On this 14th day of May, 2012, please accept my apologies. Because clearly, I have failed you. I set out to describe how the state and national unemployment rate was calculated — and explain it is an imperfect, but valuable, measure — but somehow I bungled the assignment and was unable to communicate a central element of the story. Namely, that when officials calculate unemployment they do not simply count the number of people receiving unemployment benefits. That would miss lots of people, because not everyone who’s laid off or out of work is eligible for benefits. I thought I made that point pretty emphatically, writing … To determine the statewide jobless rate, officials do not simply report the number of people receiving unemployment. That ... Continue reading →

Board members of Workforce Central Florida — at least some of them — have a busy few days ahead of them. They begin today interviewing finalists for the agency’s CEO position. The selection committee last week identified 10 candidates it wanted to talk with. The plan calls for committee members to interview half today and half tomorrow. Then, they’ll bring back their favorites for a final round of interviews on Wednesday. The committee hopes to make a recommendation to the full board by the end of the day Wednesday. The pool of 10 includes several individuals with previous workforce development experience. There’s also a rear admiral and an adjunct instructor at the U.S. Naval Academy. Allie Braswell, the current President and CEO of the Central ... Continue reading →

Almost 30,000 Floridians on long-term unemployment will lose their extended benefits this weekend, as the “EB” program begins to expire. Across the country, more than 200,000 people will be affected, according to CNNMoney, which reports … Nearly half of them live in California, and the rest reside in Florida, Illinois, North Carolina, Colorado, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Texas. The federal extended benefits program has provided the jobless with up to 20 weeks of unemployment checks after they’ve run through their state and their federal emergency benefits, which together last up to 79 weeks. But the extended benefits program is expiring throughout the country as the economy improves. To be eligible for these benefits, a state must show that its unemployment rate is at least 10% higher ... Continue reading →

The folks at the Pew Center have released a new study on economic mobility — your ability to move up the economic food chain — and Florida does not perform particularly well. Researchers looked at how the states compare to their peers and to the national average. They found that, generally, Middle Atlantic states and states in New England have better upward mobility. States in the south “have consistently lower upward and higher downward mobility,” the study found. Florida is among the nine states that generally showed worse mobility than the national average. “When it comes to achieving the American Dream, it matters where you live,” said Erin Currier, manager of the mobility project. The study focused on people born between 1943 and 1958 and ... Continue reading →

Workforce Central Florida is getting closer to selecting a new chief executive officer to lead the image-battered agency. Today, board members on the executive search committee will meet at 1 p.m. to pare down the list of possible candidates. Next week, it has scheduled three days of interviews to talk with the most promising applicants. The committee will interview half of the top candidates on Monday and the other half on Tuesday. The best will be brought back Wednesday for a second round of interviews, after which the committee is expected to make a recommendation to the full board. All told, about 300 people applied for the job, including Kevin Neal, the agency’s interim chief. Neal is an administrator from the Department of Economic Opportunity ... Continue reading →