The Revenue Estimating Conference met on August 9th to discuss the State of Florida’s revenue projections for the current and future fiscal years. Anticipated revenue for Fiscal Year 2012-2013 has been revised upward by $294 million, most of which is attributable to a $200.1 million one-time payment from the National Mortgage Settlement. For Fiscal Year 2013-2014, the projections increased by $177.8 million to a total of $26.2 billion. This represents an $869.6 million increase in general revenue over the current fiscal year.
For the third straight month, Florida’s unemployment rate was 7.1%. This translates to 665,000 unemployed workers out of a total work force of 9.4 million. As has been the trend the past few months, most of the jobs created were in lower wage industries, such as retail and service workers.