Southwest Florida Housing Market Forecast: Grim

The future is not looking good for the Southwest Florida housing market, and that means the employment forecast is equally dismal.

The latest Manpower survey shows a third of employers in Lee County and Collier County could cut jobs by the end of the year.

Even now, the Career and Service Center in Lee County has seen many more people looking for jobs. And if the Manpower numbers prove true, the job market is only going to get more crowded before the year is over.

“The business didn’t work out, at the same time I was taking care of my mother, now I have to return to work,” said a former registered nurse trying to get back into medicine.

She’s one of the dozens of people who come to the Career and Service Center in the Fort Myers housing market every day, looking for training, resume tips, and application help in a difficult climate.

But she and so many others are really struggling.

As the numbers of Florida mortgage defaults increase, the entire housing and building industries are grinding to a halt, considerably slowing the growth of Southwest Florida economically.

As a result, Manpower says 33 percent of employers are looking to trim jobs by the end of the year, and only about 17 percent are thinking of adding.

Manpower says a big reason behind job losses is, obviously, the ongoing slowdown in the Southwest Florida housing market.

“Particularly the heavy construction industry, obviously, building houses, things like that,” said Manpower branch manager Darla Betzer.

It trickles down, too, adversely affecting everyone from landscapers to Realtors to Florida mortgage broker groups. It’s not good.

For Laura, and many others like her, that means brushing up on old skills, or learning new ones, just to get back into the workforce.

Many of the classes offered by the Career and Service Center are free, and there is a job fair planned for later this month on September 27.

SOURCE: WINKnews.com