Rick Scott says Florida’s lost focus on job creation, affordability

U.S. Sen. Rick Scott was the “jobs” Governor during his eight years in Tallahassee, and the Naples Republican believes the state needs to get back to basics regarding both employment and cost of living.

“Higher costs of living in Florida are driving people away from the state. That’s bad for Floridians, bad for business, and bad for everyone. This, on the heels of last month’s jobs numbers, is incredibly discouraging,” Scott posted, responding to a Wall Street Journal article.

“Our state needs to get back on track and start focusing on jobs again. Creating new private sector jobs and driving down costs by getting government out of the way and letting people THRIVE is what is needed.”

The Journal article argues that in-migration to Florida has slowed, “threatening the state’s economic model.” Deaths outnumber births and inflows of people from other places have “slowed to a trickle.”

Indeed, net in-migration is down to 22,517 in 2025 from 183,646 in 2023, notes The Independent.

This is only Scott’s latest implicit criticism of job creation in the Gov. Ron DeSantis era.

“If you don’t have a growing job economy, then your revenues don’t grow. And so that makes it harder. When your revenue’s growing, it’s a lot easier to reduce your taxes, which is what I was able to do. We grew 1.7 million jobs when I was Governor. So what that did was, we got more revenues. And every year revenues came in, I cut more and more taxes, and that’s one thing the state needs to do,” Scott said during an interview with WFLA’s Ryan Gorman in January.

A legislative briefing from the Office of Economic and Demographic Research (EDR) regarding the state’s long-term economic outlook last year, well before the current conflict with Iran raised costs for oil and products that need it, offered further clarity as to the long-term impact of evaporating employment opportunities.

Job creation is expected to be just above 1% per year, with an increasingly older population creating further stresses on the state.

An analysis from Florida TaxWatch further details a bleak forecast. The report projects Florida’s unemployment rate increasing from 3.9% in 2025 to a peak of 4.4% in 2027, before stabilizing around 4% by 2035.

Net migration, like the overall economy, is expected to slow, however. The number of new people moving to Florida per day, minus those who are moving out of the state, is expected to drop from 922 in 2025 to 689 by 2035.

The report also notes a recent uptick in the number of Floridians leaving the state due to economic reasons, such as high property and auto insurance costs, unaffordable housing and more frequent hurricanes.