Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Good News for the Sunshine State

We are very lucky in Florida to have year round visitors and the no income tax. The benefit is that we are bringing more and more companies to our State where they can tout this feature. PPi Technologies GROUP continues to expand and offer more products and services taking advantage of all these new businesses.

The Sunshine State, which by mid-year is expected to surpass New York as the country's third most populous state, and Moody's Analytics is projecting a statewide population increase of 360,000 annually for at least the next two years.

With the really harsh winters in the North for the past two years this movement to the south is really no surprise. In addition to young families moving here, the massive baby boom generation continues to actively seek-out the best places to retire or find less stressful jobs where they can offer their life experience skills. The boomers will redefine how retirement is lived, and in Florida they can lead healthy, productive and culturally rich lifestyles.

One of the benefits of this migration to Florida is the number of new jobs being created to cater to its needs. In December for example, Florida added more than 25,000 new private sector jobs, topping all other states except Texas. This had the effect of driving down the state's unemployment level to 6.4%, its lowest level since mid-2008. This is fantastic news for local businesses and the economy.

Of course, significant new growth in Southwest Florida's job sector has created additional demand for housing and schools. What is not happening is more investments in infrastructure like roads and in Sarasota we are starting to see it daily. We all need to tell our elected officials to take note of this before we have major gridlock. University Parkway was a disaster zone last week following an accident on the I75 road.

Welcome new Floridians. Legislators start preparing for phenomenal growth in the next 5 years.