Low pay is rule in Florida, leader in creating jobs

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) -- When it comes to creating new jobs, Florida is leading the nation. But many workers are having trouble paying their bills -- many of these new jobs, even in Florida's huge tourism industry, just don't pay well.
Katherine Brooks, 25, took a job last June working behind the counter at The Coffee House at Thornton Park, a trendy Orlando neighborhood, when she couldn't find a position in historic preservation, her area of study at Louisiana State University.
The recent graduate expects to earn under $12,000 this year working 30-hour weeks. She moved to Orlando to be with her fianc & eacute;, who works for a video game company and pays most of the household expenses.
"Would I be able to support myself in this job? Absolutely not," Brooks said. "I wouldn't even be able to afford rent."
Brooks has plenty of company; her job is considered part of the leisure and hospitality industry, which has an annual average pay of $17,106, among the lower-paying sectors in the state. It includes the tourism industry.
Two-fifths of the private-sector jobs Florida gained during the past year were in fields where the average annual pay was under $24,297, according to a review by The Associated Press. The 39,000 new jobs in those sectors are paid less than 75 percent of Florida's average annual pay of $32,397.
Here's the situation
The rest of the newly created private-sector jobs in Florida were split between sectors considered middle-of-the-road on the pay scale and higher paying jobs.
Under a third of the jobs (30,800 positions) fell into sectors that paid between $24,297 and $40,496, and more than a quarter of the jobs (27,800 positions) fell into sectors that had an average annual pay higher than $40,496, or 125 percent of the state's average annual pay, according to the review.
Bruce Nissen, an economist and director of research at Florida International University in Miami's Center for Labor Research and Studies, said he isn't surprised that low-paying jobs dominate the new positions being created.
"The Achilles heel is the structure dependent on leisure, hospitality and retail sales," Nissen said.
On the other end of the wage scale, 41-year-old Randy Smith of Orlando landed a $77,000-a-year engineering job after being unemployed for nearly two years. In his new job, Smith has the potential to earn an additional $22,000 over his base salary.
Now that he's employed again, earning the same amount as in his previous job, he thinks the job market is improving slowly.
"I always joke that when you're out of a job, the unemployment rate just went to 100 percent," he said. "At that instant you don't care about anybody but yourself."
Florida had a net gain of 90,500 nonagricultural jobs in the past year; more than 127,000 jobs were created, while about 36,500 jobs were lost. That was the highest number of jobs created in any state.
Growth and loss figures
Leading Florida's job growth in the past year were job placement services (average annual pay of $21,511), local government (average annual pay of $38,280) and construction specialty trade contractors (average annual pay of $30,131).
Sectors that lost the most jobs were in manufacturing (average annual pay of $39,323), information technology (average annual pay of $46,154) and transportation (average annual pay of $34,384).
Nationwide, manufacturing and information jobs have been slumping. Manufacturers have dealt with economic hard times at home and abroad, and they have struggled to compete with a flood of imported goods. Information jobs have dried up with the burst of the tech bubble. Transportation jobs were cut primarily in the airline industry.
The state, which had an unemployment rate of 5.3 percent in August, is also faring much better than the rest of the nation when it comes to employment. The national unemployment rate last month was 6.1 percent. Florida's nearest competition in job growth came from Georgia, which had a net gain of 50,900 jobs during the past year.
But the job growth didn't keep pace with Florida's huge population growth of about 1,000 people a day. And the increase in jobs has done nothing to change Florida's disproportionate reliance on low-wage jobs, some economists say.