More than one in five South Florida residents said their employers were firing workers in 2011, according a Gallup poll released this morning.
The rankings are the result of a yearlong survey in which respondents were asked if their employer was currently hiring or firing employees -- Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, came out on top, with 37 percent saying their firm was hiring and only 12 percent saying their employer was letting workers go.
While 29 percent of South Florida residents said their bosses were hiring last year, 21 percent reported their company was letting workers go. The other 50 percent of respondents worked at pill mills and couldn't answer the phone because they were rolling in piles of oxycodone. Hey, it's a job.
"Every one of the top 50 U.S. metro areas has a positive Job Creation Index score, indicating there is more hiring than firing going on in the nation's largest cities," the release says. "At the same time, the high degree of local variation makes clear that some cities are doing very well, while others are not doing as well on a relative basis."
There were three other Florida metro areas were on the list, and all of them did better than we did:
5. Orlando-Kissimmee: 37 percent hiring, 16 percent letting go
32. Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater: 33 percent hiring, 20 percent letting go
40. Jacksonville: 31 percent hiring, 20 percent letting go
44. Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach: 29 percent hiring, 21 percent letting go.
There's a margin of error of up to +/- 5 percentage points, though, so we might be way better off than the survey says. Or way worse. (Check out the Gallup site if you have more questions about their interviewing and weighting methodology.)
According to state economic data released earlier this month, Broward County had an 8.3 percent seasonally unadjusted unemployment rate in January, while Palm Beach County was up at 9.6 percent.
Florida's overall unemployment rate was 9.6 percent.
