Brevard County Housing Market Seen as Cause of Area’s Unemployment Rise
The aftershocks of the Brevard County housing market slowdown apparently are being felt in the region’s employment rolls.
According to figures released Thursday by Florida’s Agency for Workforce Innovation, Brevard County’s unemployment rose to 3.8 percent in January.
That’s up from 3.2 percent in both the previous month and in January 2006, and signifies by far the largest one-month increase since just after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The last time the local unemployment rate was as high as 3.8 percent was in March 2005. And the last time the rate rose at least 0.6 percentage points was in October 2001, when it rose to 5.7 percent, up from 4.2 percent the previous month.
Local officials believe the increase in the jobless rate is related to a leveling off in the Florida real estate industry that’s occurring in many markets throughout the state, including the Space Coast.
As Florida mortgage costs continue to squeeze homeowners, the biggest year-over-year job losses came in the construction industry and professional and business services sector. Each saw a reduction of 700 jobs.
Joan Van Scyoc, a spokeswoman for the Brevard Workforce Development Board, which runs the Job Link offices in Cocoa, Palm Bay and Titusville, said employment officials believe both sectors are related to housing market woes, which persist despite low mortgage rates.
While housing has slowed in Brevard County and elsewhere, many people believe the market is moving to more rational levels, compared with the hyperactivity of 2003 through parts of last year.
The slowdown is most noticeable in construction - contractors, plumbers, electricians and laborers - but also in areas such as the processing of Florida mortgages and other services related to the real estate market.
That could explain the job losses in professional and business services sector.
“We think this is a ripple effect,” Van Scyoc said.
In 2006, the total value of housing permits in Brevard was $973.45 million, the lowest annual total in Brevard since permitted home construction hit $810.05 million in 2002, according to data released by the Home Builders & Contractors Association of Brevard.
The total number of permits countywide for single-family and multi-family home units dropped to 4,899 in 2006 from 8,663 in 2005.
Other than the downfall of the Florida housing market as a whole, Van Scyoc was at a loss to explain the rise in the county’s unemployment.
“If you looked at the local economy in January 2006, it was going great guns, more so than it ever had. Maybe it’s just getting back to where it’s supposed to be,” Van Scyoc said.
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