Florida state economists predict that the state will gain at least one million new jobs over the next seven years bringing the total to 8.3 million jobs by 2017-18.

According to Amy Baker, coordinator of the Legislature's Office of Economic and Demographic Research, Our belief is that there is nothing that has changed about Florida, its attraction to other states and other countries and that were slowly heading back to that same pace, over the long run theres still significant growth in our forecast.

Economists also foresee the unemployment rates will stay around 11.8% and the housing market will remain troubled for longer than originally expected. The high foreclosure rate continues to add more homes onto the already overloaded inventory keeping Florida at number 1 in terms of the shadow inventory.