In today’s Daily Record, Peyton is quoted touting the “nation-defying successes of Jacksonville” in weathering the economic downtown:
Peyton did say the struggles of the national and international economy have benefited Northeast Florida.
“This is affecting Jacksonville in ways we didn’t anticipate. We have had phenomenal success in attracting international business to Jacksonville,” he said. “We are defying gravity in Jacksonville and that is through a lot of planning and hard work.”
A good quote, yes. Reality, no.
In truth, Jacksonville is ranked #30 out of 49 in terms of unemployment rates for large metropolitan areas in Sept of this year with unemployment of 6.3%. (Not quite on par with Oklahoma City’s 3.5% or Birmingham’s 4.8%) While one can certainly understand the Mayor’s desire to remain optimistic, stating that North Florida has “benefitted” from the “struggles of the national and international economies” is blatantly false.
Just wait until all of those Citibank job cuts start hitting the Jacksonville call centers. What about Merrill Lynch’s merger with Bank of America? How will that affect the large operations of both companies in Jacksonville? Not to mention Wachovia’s demise…
Filed under: Jacksonville, Mayor of Jacksonville , Jacksonville, Jacksonville Unemployment Rate, John Peyton, Mayor Peyton
[...] a comment » Abel discussed John Peyton’s comments (that went unchallenged) from the other day about how Jacksonville was “defying” the [...]
[...] You may remember that exactly one month ago, Mayor John Peyton claimed that Jacksonville was “defying gravity” in terms of economic growth. Of course, the Mayor didn’t explain how that was actually [...]
[...] prognosis about Jacksonville’s job market (read Jaxpolitics’ posts here, here, and here), the US Conference of Mayors released a report on expected job declines in the [...]