Florida Is Last in Job Growth, and Your Best Candidates Still Have Options
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Florida ranks 47th out of 50 states for jobs in a 2026 ranking of the best and worst states for workers. Louisiana sits one spot above at 46th, and only Pennsylvania, Oregon, and West Virginia score lower. Florida ranks last of all 50 states for employment growth.
Nebraska takes first place with 3% unemployment, the third-best job security in the country, and the fourth-highest employment growth, at about 1.2% a year. North Dakota, Minnesota, South Dakota, and New Hampshire complete the top 5. Two other Southern states land in the top 10, with Texas at 8th and Tennessee at 10th.
The ranking scores all 50 states on 34 measures, with 60% of the weight on the job market and 40% on the economic environment, using data as of September 30, 2026. A different weighting could move Florida, and a statewide rank can hide big differences between Orlando, Miami, and Tampa.
Florida’s 47th place gets the headlines, but the number that matters is last for employment growth. Jobs are not growing as fast as the number of people looking for them, and that matches what we see in Florida hiring right now. Companies are filling the roles they need to fill, and they are choosing carefully. September’s national jobs report, which showed only 29,000 jobs added, points the same way.
If you’re looking for work in Florida, a generic online application will rarely get you there. Go after specific employers, find someone inside who can refer you, and be ready to say exactly what you accomplished in your last job, with numbers. See what’s open right now and start with the roles that match your last title.
If you’re an employer, a slow market gives you no reason to move slowly or lowball. Strong candidates still collect competing offers in a soft market, and the companies that move quickly and pay competitively land them. If you’re hiring in Florida and want help moving faster, talk to us about hiring.
Scripps Cut 431 Jobs and Plans 100 New Ones, and Newscast Production Took the Hit
The E.W. Scripps Company eliminated 431 positions nationwide on Tuesday, October 27, according to NewscastStudio. The Cincinnati-based broadcaster cut newsroom, production, engineering, and technical jobs at local television stations across the country. Scripps also announced more than 100 new positions, including reporting and community engagement roles.
CEO Adam Symson wrote in a memo to employees that it can be “difficult to see positions eliminated while we are also creating new roles.” He said Scripps hopes to fill as many of the new positions as possible with people whose jobs were eliminated, and that most of the major restructuring is complete.
The new round follows 268 positions cut in August and 27 cut in September, when Scripps consolidated management of its local stations into 11 regions. Across those three rounds, Scripps has eliminated at least 726 positions.
Station reports show where the cuts landed. At WCPO in Cincinnati, between 11 and 16 people lost their jobs, according to WVXU, including about half of the station’s 12-person photography staff, two producers, assignment editors, a video editor, and engineers. At WTMJ in Milwaukee, more than a dozen employees were laid off, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, including producers, video journalists, and assignment editors. None of WTMJ’s 33 on-air employees were among them.
A Scripps spokesperson told WVXU that the eliminated positions were primarily tied to traditional newscast production. WCPO will keep airing live newscasts with new workflows meant to let journalists produce more reporting in the field. Scripps reports third-quarter results in early November, and it has not released a station-by-station breakdown of the 431 positions.
The jobs Scripps cut sit behind the camera: photographers, producers, editors, and engineers. The jobs it is adding put reporters in the community. My read is that automation is absorbing production work across local media and the money is moving toward work a machine can’t do. Scripps joins the other employers announcing cuts this month, including Amazon and HubSpot.
If you’re one of the 431, apply for the new roles right away, and keep a second plan going. A TV producer or video editor has deadline discipline and live-production skills that corporate communications, marketing, and in-house video teams hire for all the time, and I’d expect many of those jobs to pay better. If you’re an employer building a video or communications team, these are experienced candidates, and our staffing services can help you reach them.
Staffing your team doesn’t have to be hard.
Reach out and see how we can help.
Only 39% of Workers Could Cover 3 Months Without a Paycheck, and Many Feel Stuck in Their Jobs
Monster Research Institute’s new Livelihood Index asked employed Americans how secure they feel about their money, their skills, and their job options. Workers scored 3.28 out of 5, which Monster calls “Holding.” Economic Security scored lowest of the four dimensions at 3.04 (“Stretched”), followed by Market Agency at 3.13, Future Readiness at 3.42, and Skill Portability at 3.55. Monster surveyed 1,033 employed U.S. adults ages 18 to 74 online from September 28 to October 3.
Money is where people feel weakest. Only 39% say they could maintain their current standard of living for at least 3 months if they lost their main source of income, and 55% could cover a surprise $400 expense without borrowing or adding to a credit card balance. Just 49% say their income comfortably covers regular household expenses, and 44% can save after paying them. Compared with 3 months ago, 32% say their income keeps up with expenses worse than before, 22% say better, and 46% say about the same.
Workers also feel boxed in. 46% say they have to accept whatever work situation they can get because of the job market. 48% are confident they could find a job that meets their pay, schedule, and work requirements, and 41% believe they could change jobs without a big cut in pay or benefits.
The skills numbers look better. 71% believe their skills would be useful to employers outside their current occupation or industry, and 71% can identify more than one type of job they realistically qualify for. On AI, 48% believe they are keeping pace with how it is changing their work, 45% worry their skills could become less valuable, and 44% started or increased their use of AI tools in the past 3 months. In that same period, a recruiter or employer contacted 39%, and 38% applied for a new job.
The number I’d point every employer to is 46%. Almost half of employed people feel they have to take whatever work they can get, and only 39% could last 3 months without a paycheck. People in that spot stay where they are and quietly look for something better, and the 38% who applied for a new job in the past 3 months suggests it is already happening. Monster’s own loyalty survey I covered earlier this month found 90% of workers say employers expect more loyalty than they give back, and Owl Labs found 38% of workers job hugging, staying in roles they are unhappy with.
Monster’s report tells employers to review whether pay, benefits, and scheduling give workers the stability they need, because staying with an employer should not automatically be read as satisfaction. It also advises employers to look beyond matching job titles when assessing candidates and to ask applicants how their skills apply to the role.
For job seekers, the 71% skill-portability figure is the useful one. Most workers believe their skills transfer to another field, but a job title won’t show a hiring manager that. The candidates who get hired outside their field explain exactly how their last job applies to the new one.
College Graduates’ Median Pay Rose $5 in a Year While Prices Rose 3.5%
The typical full-time worker age 25 and over made $1,307 a week in the third quarter of 2026, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The figure is up 2.0% from $1,281 a year ago, while consumer prices rose 3.5% over the same period, so prices climbed faster than paychecks. BLS covers 110.9 million full-time wage and salary workers in this series.
Education still makes the biggest difference in pay, and the year-over-year changes split by group:
- Less than a high school diploma: $819 a week, up 5.4% from $777
- High school graduates, no college: $993, up 1.3% from $980
- Some college or an associate degree: $1,140, up 3.7% from $1,099
- Bachelor’s degree or higher: $1,752, up 0.3% from $1,747
BLS leads with the overall figure, but the table shows the college graduate median rose by only $5 in a year. Workers without a high school diploma saw the biggest gain, and workers with some college came next. Those two groups were the only ones whose pay grew faster than prices. College graduates still make about 76% more than high school graduates, a gap of about $759 a week, or roughly $39,500 a year.
The data come from the Current Population Survey and are not seasonally adjusted. BLS has no fourth-quarter 2025 figure because of the October 2025 federal government shutdown.
A degree remains worth about $39,500 a year over a high school diploma, so the data give no reason to skip college. A 0.3% gain in a year when prices rose 3.5% does mean the typical college graduate’s pay fell behind, while pay at the lower end of the education scale grew fastest.
Be careful with the word “raise.” These figures are medians for different groups of people in each year, so the $5 gap says nothing about any one graduate’s paycheck. Changes in who is working and in which jobs can move a median while individual pay stays flat. The data also cannot explain why pay moved this way.
My read is that employers are paying up to fill hourly and skilled-labor jobs and holding the line on salaried professional roles, where they have more applicants to choose from. BLS data cannot confirm that, so treat it as a hypothesis. If you hold a degree and want a real raise right now, waiting for your annual review probably won’t get you there, and changing employers or taking on a bigger role is the more likely path. If you’re an employer, a graduate who hasn’t seen a meaningful raise is a flight risk, so check your pay bands before a competitor does. Explore our staffing services if you need help benchmarking a role.
Sources
WalletHub, Best & Worst States for Jobs in 2026, published October 28, 2026
NewscastStudio, Scripps eliminates 431 jobs in latest round of nationwide television station layoffs, October 28, 2026
Monster Research Institute, Q3 2026 Monster Livelihood Index, October 28, 2026
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Median weekly earnings by educational attainment, third quarter 2026, October 27, 2026
