Volusia, Flagler Counties See Wages Decline; Housing, Mortgage Markets to Blame
As the Florida real estate slowdown began tightening its grip on the local economy last summer, average wages in Flagler County dropped below $29,000, a 9.2 percent slide from the mid-2005 level, the state reported Monday.
Volusia County, meanwhile, moved above Flagler on the wage ladder, posting a 4.5 percent increase that pushed its average up to $30,192.
However, Volusia County’s figures showed a $576 decline from the annualized wage levels of last spring.
Economic development officials in both counties said they hadn’t analysed the figures released Monday by the state Agency for Workforce Development.
However, they said they were struck by the large number of good-paying jobs in real estate and Florida mortgage lending that had evaporated.
Flagler County, heavily dependent on home builders, construction and sales for its economic livelihood, serves as a coal miner’s canary for Volusia County, said Rick Michael, Volusia’s director of economic development.
“Flagler’s economy is so based on housing that we watch the Flagler market as a pre-warning of the Volusia County market,” Michael said.
Michael said his staff has been analyzing employment declines that have occurred since January.
He estimated Volusia’s workforce of 254,000 has shed about 5,000. Jobless figures, which had been hovering around 7,300 last year, rose to 9,200.
“We were surprised by the loss of 400-500 jobs in business and professional services,” Michael said. “We had been growing in that area every month.”
Michael said the cutback partly reflected the closing of Florida home mortgage offices and other reductions in financial services.
Flagler’s construction industry has lost about 150 jobs, slipping below 2,000, said Sharon Warriner, spokesman for the Workforce Development Board of Flagler and Volusia.
More significant, she said, was the “huge” cutback in the real estate and Florida mortgage loan industries, shrinking from nearly 2,000 workers in September of 2005 to 532 the following summer.
Overall, an average of 18,499 people were employed in Flagler County last summer, a decline of 254 jobs, or 1.3 percent, from the employment level a year earlier. Volusia’s employment averaged 165,068 last summer, or 1.3 percent more than the 162,899 at work the previous year.
SOURCE: Daytona Beach News-Journal
