Money Monday: Florida job market challenges

Welcome back. Today's Money Monday topic is the challenging job market. A new WalletHub study ranks Florida 47th out of 50 states for people looking for work. The state was dragged down by low starting salaries, also a tough market when it comes to openings. We want to bring in our good friend David Sprinkle, managing partner of Veritas Recruiting Group, to talk more about this. First of all, great to have you. Thanks for coming. Thanks for having me. Do you agree with these numbers that you're seeing? Well, I don't know exactly what's happening in the rest of the the country as much. I think I think it seems a little extreme, given what we're seeing. I not only have a recruiting firm, I'm also on the board for CareerSource Central Florida. And so there are challenges. And so you do see certain companies that lay off, and it's usually the bigger companies. It's not necessarily the medium-sized and smaller companies. And Orlando specifically is filled with medium-sized and small companies. We don't have huge corporate headquarters here. We have some. But not massive Fortune 500 companies other than like Verizon and Darden. So there's a little bit of, I think, national pressure that's happening here. I would agree that our salaries are probably a little bit lower than some other areas of the country and even more so in Orlando. The hospitality industry typically has lower salaries, which drags down our averages. But no, I mean, if you're looking for a job, it's not three years ago, four years ago, where it was way easier. David, one of the things we used to tell young people was tech. We're all about tech jobs, right? And then we're seeing these numbers from these tech companies, which are cutting jobs significantly. Microsoft right now, I think 60,000 jobs are going to be gone pretty quickly here, and they're giving buyouts. What do we tell our young people about really what are the truly secure jobs Things that they can be going into right now. I would 100% look at the trades. And you can still go to college and get into the trades. And I think that's actually a fantastic way for someone that has an interest in electrical or plumbing or HVAC or things of that nature. There's so much demand. AI is not taking those jobs until the Star Wars droids come and can actually do the work themselves. Maybe. However, those are great. But if you've also got a business degree or something similar to that, that you come out of college with, And then you're able to go into those trades, then you'll own your own business. And not only does an electrician make six figures, but if you own the business that employs the six-figure electricians, you make a lot more money than that. So great opportunities, I think, in the trades, certainly. But we've got great industries here, healthcare is huge, which I guess you could call it a trade especially in like nursing and things like that. But healthcare is huge, hospitality is huge in Florida and construction is huge in Florida. Those are our three pillars. Those are cranking and so that's why I say that we work with a lot of companies across the spectrum and those companies are hiring right now, they're not laying off and we also see financial services like insurance. So manufacturing, we're seeing a lot of manufacturing growing here in Central Florida, advanced manufacturing, making the chips, as well as just manufacturing things and stuff. And we've got a lot of those companies in Central Florida that have a hard time finding people that know how to do that type of work or know how to manage that type of work. So lots of opportunities. It's just not. They're just not bonking you on the head, falling off the trees, right? You got to climb up and get the fruit. Absolutely, yeah. No, it's great advice, David. We always love having you. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us. My pleasure. Everybody watching this morning, we appreciate you. Very positive. Stay safe. Thank you. Yeah, be careful out there.