Florida Adds Most Jobs Since 2020, Unemployment Below US Average

August 20, 2021 Updated 1:30 P.M. ET

FORT MYERS, FL – Friday, the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity released Florida’s July 2021 Employment Data. 

Florida added 63,900 private sector jobs in July. The unemployment rate increased 0.1%, but remains extraordinarily low since 2020 and below the national average of 5.4%. 

Governor Ron DeSantis (R) touted the job numbers on Twitter, boasting Florida’s strong economic performance emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic. 

In comparison to a larger, Democrat-controlled state like New York, Florida was not strangled as hard by government restrictions and has seen a more rapid recovery. New York’s recovery is taking a more “modest” pace.

“In just two months last spring, more than 900,000 of the city’s jobs disappeared, wiping out nearly all of the employment gains racked up during a record-length expansion that started in 2009. The city’s official unemployment rate spiked to a high of 20 percent in May, one of the highest of any city in the country,” The New York Times reported.

DeSantis took a more liberty-friendly approach to handling the COVID-19 pandemic, while other states used more draconian measures.