This weekend we saw Hurricane Irma impact the entire state of Florida. It was worse than expected, in some ways, and better than it could have been, in other ways. It was thought that it was going to go up the middle of the state, hitting Miami and Orlando head-on. The storm drifted west a little more than expected. Just as with the economic impacts of Hurricane Harvey and Houston, the impacts of Hurricane Irma will not be recorded for at least two weeks, with regard to unemployment claims. The cut-off date for the Jobs Report, or Employment Situation Report, is tomorrow. We may not see changes in employment recorded until the October Jobs Report,  which is received during November. What can we Expect for the August Employment and Unemployment Number for Florida when the data for August is Released?

Florida has Five Sectors that have not recovered from the Great Recession. The data here is similar to the national picture. Mining, Construction, Manufacturing, Government, and Information Technology still have a way to go to return to pre-recession levels.

Three Sectors have surged since the recession. Trade, Transportation and Utilities (TTU,) Professional Business Services, and Leisure/Hospitality have surged since the recession.

There were nearly 6.6 million workers in the State of Florida last year.  The three sectors  that have grown the most, TTU, Prof. Bus. Services, and Leisure/Hospitality,.  plus Government are the four largest employment sectors.The August only data table shows that employment rose from August 1992 to August 1993 after Hurricane Andrew. The same situation is seen between 2005 and 2006 after the monster season for Hurricanes.

The Month to Month data and August to August data indicates that we should see strong growth in Florida during the month of August. The month to month data indicates that we may see a drop in workers in the IT Super Sector and the Leisure and Hospitality Super Sector. The August to August Growth should exceed 3% for all workers.

The Unemployment data should also show improvement. Normally we see a drop month to month and August to August in the state of Florida during the month of August.

This data can be broken down by City. Some cities are group as Metropolitan Statistical Areas. The purpose of this column, and the Houston Column, are to take a baseline reading. There was a spike in unemployment observed in the data released last week. More increases are expected. The weekly unemployment claims data for Florida may not be seen for two weeks. We may not see any impact in the September Jobs data for Florida because the data collection end date is tomorrow. These storms will have an impact on the economy. Some people will lose jobs. Some people will be hired to help in the recovery process. This writer has been two house fires. It takes time to get back to normal.

These are human events. These are environmental events. These are economic events.

It's the economy.

The data can be broken down by city by the author for any MSA or City delineated in the data. Contact the author at jack@itstheeconomy.info for services and costs.