Tallahassee Employment Data Released

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According to Tallahassee.com, a survey of state employment released this week shows that Governor Rick Scott has gotten off to a fast start when it comes to keeping his campaign promises. One of those promises was to shrink the size of the Florida government and the cost of operating the state government. The beginning of Scott’s first full fiscal year was on July 1, and the report does not cover the layoffs and other payroll fixed that took effect on that date.

The Annual Workforce Report was released by the Department of Management Services, which is 82 pages long, and describes in detail the number of state employees and what their earnings are for the year. There were some members of the Leon County legislature that were unhappy with the report, even though the data is visible to the naked eye of the public.

The State Personnel System, in Selected Exempt and Senior Management, dropped the number of employees from 105,031 to 101,348. Those losses occurred from June 30, 2010 to June 30, 2011. The average salary for those employees dropped from $38,540 to $37,898.

“What concerns me is, it looks like it’s going to get even worse,” said state Sen. Bill Montford, D-Tallahassee. “The bottom line here is that state employees continue to be under-appreciated and under-paid. But what makes it worse is, it’s going to be more difficult to attract young workers into state positions.”

Michelle Rehwinkel Vasilina, a Democratic State Representative from Tallahassee said the following:

“It’s just a shame that we’re not valuing the work of our state employees. I knew Scott promised, as a candidate last year, to reduce the size and cost of state government, but he needs to change course a little bit.”

The report also said that the State Personnel System salary average was 7.9 percent below the average wages in the private sector of the state for comparative jobs. The salary percentage dropped by 1.7 percent from that level. The report also stated that 80 percent of Career Service employees and 30 percent of Selected Exempt employees earned under $40,000 per year.

Over the past two years there were no general pay raises and there were only one-time bonuses or incentive pay hikes took place for only a couple of years prior to the study. The average salary for all industries in the state of Florida rose by 4.5 percent since the year 2007 but it has fallen 1.1 percent since 2007 in the State Personnel System.

The annual report has shown for years that Florida ranks last in the country in per-capita number and cost of state employment. There were 116 employees per 10,000 residents as of June 20, 2011 for the state of Florida. This number is compared to the national average of 217 per 10,000 residents. The state’s personnel cost taxpayers $38 per year, which is half of the national annual average of $75.