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Hernando County Unemployment Rises Again

By TONY HOLT

Hernando Today

Published: March 27, 2009

Updated: 03/27/2009 02:26 pm

BROOKSVILLE - Hernando County's unemployment rate ticked upward to 12.7 percent for February, according to figures from the Agency for Workforce Innovation.
The state's unemployment rate jumped from 8.8 percent in January to 9.4 percent, making it the highest since April 1976.
The number of unemployed workers in Hernando County increased from 7,890 in January to 8,083 in February – this in spite of a slight decline in the labor force.
"What's going on here is going on all over the state," said Ken Russ, a spokesman with the Hernando-Pasco Workforce Board.
Pasco County's unemployment rate also spiked in February – from 10.8 to 11.3 percent.
Flagler County continues to have the state's highest unemployment – a rate of 14.2 percent. On the positive side, Flagler was one of only two counties that saw a decline in unemployment. In January, it was at 14.5 percent.
Bay County, located in the Florida Panhandle, was the other. Its unemployment dropped from 10.0 to 9.7 percent.
In January, 20 counties in Florida had double-digit unemployment. That number rose to 27 in February.
Fourteen out of Florida's 23 metropolitan areas are above the state's unemployment rate. Nineteen are higher than the most recent national unemployment figure, which was at 8.1 percent.
The Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater area, which includes Hernando County, has an average unemployment rate of 10.2 percent, up from 9.7 the month before.
All of the aforementioned data come from the Agency for Workforce Innovation.