Collier County's job losses blamed on Hurricane Irma, other factors

While most counties in Florida are gaining jobs, state data shows Collier County has been shedding them for months.

The county has been showing year-over-year jobs losses since March. It has been dropping more jobs in some industries than it has been adding in others, bringing overall employment growth to a halt.

Some thought the situation would turn around quickly, but it didn't.

The county continued to see year-over-year job declines in April, May and June, according to reports by the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity. The monthly report for July will be released Friday.

The four-month trend has some scratching their heads.

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"It's an interesting phenomenon," said Michael Dalby, president and CEO of the Greater Naples Chamber of Commerce. "We seem to be one of the few counties in the state that has seen this."

Many have blamed the job losses on Hurricane Irma.

The storm, Dalby said, is likely a factor, but he questions why job growth didn't go into the negative sooner. The storm hit nearly a year ago.

If the job losses are strictly Irma-related, Dalby also questions why Collier would be affected so much more than other areas, including neighboring Lee County, which continues to show jobs gains. The storm left virtually no part of the state untouched, and most counties around the state continue to grow jobs.

Dalby suggests the lack of affordable housing in Collier might have something to do with the county's job losses, as businesses may be setting up elsewhere or workers might be moving to other areas where they know there are less expensive homes to buy and rent.

Also, Collier County is a more pricey place to do business, which could be chasing new businesses away, he said.

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The job losses are further evidence that the county needs to continue its efforts to diversify its economy, rather than relying on its three-legged stool of tourism, construction/real estate and agriculture, so it can better weather economic turbulence and uncertainty, Dalby said.

He said he'll continue to keep a watchful eye on the job numbers. 

"It's an indicator of economic health. But we're still trying to figure out within Collier County's unique economy, how does that play out," he said. 

The state releases different sets of job data monthly.

According to one set of data, Collier County lost 1,700 jobs in June — a 1.2 percent decline from a year earlier. That data is based on business records and surveys.

Another data set shows Collier shed 618 jobs in June year over year — down 0.4 percent. This data is based on household surveys and counts self-employed workers and others who aren't included in the other data. It's the information the Florida Chamber of Commerce uses to generate The Florida Scorecard, which updates every county's metrics every month.

The latest Florida Scorecard shows about a dozen of the state's 67 counties lost jobs over the year in June. However, most shed fewer than 70 jobs, and only one lost more than Collier. Monroe dropped 5,359 jobs — and it's the county that took the hardest hit from Irma, so that's "understandable," said Jerry Parrish, the chief economist and director of research for the Florida Chamber Foundation.

"What's interesting about Collier is Collier was doing very well before Hurricane Irma came through," he said. "Ever since then, they have been trying to recover jobs year over year."

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Parrish attributes the job losses in Collier and Monroe to the storm, saying the two counties took the brunt of the damage from Irma.

While he agrees Collier took a bigger hit from Irma than many other parts of the state, Christopher Westley, an economics professor and director of the Regional Economic Research Institute at Florida Gulf Coast University, said he saw signs of an economic slowdown in Collier before Irma.

In 2016, for example, the county's gross domestic product, or GDP, grew just 1.1 percent, representing the increase in the total value of all goods and services produced within its borders, he said. That compared to a growth rate of 3.6 percent in nearby Charlotte County and 5.2 percent in Lee County, so "Collier was definitely the outlier," Westley said.

"I thought it would get revised upward but it wasn’t," he said.

The GDP growth rate for Florida was 2.7 percent in 2016.

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The sluggish growth in Collier may have been attributed to a slowdown in real estate tied in part to the uncertainty of a presidential election, but there has been some recovery in the industry since then, Westley.  

However, uncertainty remains.

"You could probably argue that a lot of the policies that have shifted since Trump has been elected have made things more uncertain," Westley said. "Trade policy, tariffs, may have created a situation that is less certain than it might otherwise have been. That could be affecting Collier right now too."

A noticeable shift in Collier County's workforce happened in 2017, he said. From 2012 to 2016, it followed the usual pattern of peaking in March and bottoming out in July and August, then resuming growth. But in 2017, it remained somewhat flat after the March peak, showing less seasonality. 

Employment in March of 2017 was at 172,373 in the county. In March 2018, it was 170,304. 

"This is the first decline from March to March since the recession," Westley said. 

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Based on the state data released in June, retail led the way when it came to job losses in Collier. The county shed 1,600 retail jobs over the year — a 7.4 percent decline. 

"That's a pretty big decline for an industry that makes up 15 percent of total private employment in Collier," Westley said.

Karen Smith, press secretary for the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity, said retail trade has shown losses over the year in Collier since September 2017. 

"The current estimates have not totally reflected recovery from Hurricane Irma.  We anticipate that the retail trade employment will be revised upward with the historical updates that will be released in March 2019," she said. 

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While Collier lost jobs in retail, Lee saw a 3.7 percent increase in employment in that sector, showing its workforce is less seasonal and maybe it wasn't hurt as much by the hurricane, Westley said.

Jace Kentner, Collier County's director of business and economic development, said he couldn't think of any specific store closings that would have led to so many job losses in retail.

"There’s development going on Fifth Avenue South and many stores had to close, move or shut down for a while until they found new locations. Also, Toys R Us and a few smaller retailers closed. We are still pursuing a quantitative answer," he said.

Jim Wall, spokesman for CareerSource Southwest Florida, which connects job seekers and employers, said there may still be plenty of job openings in retail in Collier, but nobody to fill them.

The number of filled positions may be down because workers are finding opportunities closer to home in Lee County, or employers in Collier County aren't settling for subpar candidates in a tight labor market, he said. 

Collier's unemployment rate stood at 3.9 percent in June.  

While the retail sector is showing the most job losses in Collier, from June 2017 to June 2018, the county also shed: 

• 200 jobs in wholesale trade
• 100 in information
• 600 in other services 
• 600 in professional and business services

However, the county continues to add jobs in other sectors, namely construction, with 1,200 jobs created in that industry alone over the year. 

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Collier’s employment has grown quickly since the Great Recession, Westley said. Since the recovery, Gov. Rick Scott has visited the Naples area several times to tout its job growth, but not recently.

"It’s possible that this has been unsustainable growth and the changes we’re witnessing are part of an adjustment process to a more sustainable growth pattern," Westley said.  "Regardless, none of that will matter if the national economy falls into a recession in 2020."