Fishkind Commentaries: Job Growth and a Population Surge Start the New Year
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
By: Tom Parkinson

Jan. 10, 2012 | WMFE - Florida's annual legislative session begins today in Tallahassee. State lawmakers will be working on redistricting, the state budget and a number of other issues on their fully packed agenda. As they start to work, they have a couple of pieces of good news from the federal government.

Two new sets of data from federal agencies seem to predict a slowly improving economy for Florida in 2012. 
The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows stronger than expected job growth in the US in December.
Also, new figures released by the U.S. Census Bureau show a surge in population in Florida much higher than demographers had expected. 90.7’s Tom Parkinson asked economic analyst Hank Fishkind to explain how these two sets of figures intersect and how these new facts might impact what lawmakers do in Tallahassee this year.
Fishkind says the government’s new employment figures were surprisingly positive.