Five Florida cities that may be future Detroits

For a larger view click on the map.

WDW- FL reported that one-third of Florida’s cities are in “perilous financial positions“. The reasons: the increasing burden of  growing retirement and medical costs for government retirees coupled with shrinking revenues.

Luke Rosiak from the Washington Examiner did an analysis to determine which US cities have a larger proportion of government workers to population than Detroit. Rosiak used the Census Bureau’s 2011 Annual Survey of Public Employment and Payroll to rank every U.S. city with a population of 200,000 or more.

Rosiak notes, “Remarkably, the Census Bureau excluded from these figures all teachers and education professionals, which make up the largest group of local government employees.”

Rosiak reports, “Detroit declared bankruptcy due in no small part to $3 billion in unfunded public employee pensions owed a sprawling city workforce that kept growing even as the city’s population shriveled, but a Washington Examiner analysis found that 19 major American cities have even bigger ratios of such workers to residents.”

“What’s more, seven of the 19 cities with larger relative workforces than Detroit paid workers more than twice as much as the Motor City did its employees,” states Rosiak.

To view the map with all of the city data click here.

Below are those Florida cities listed by Rosiak (Note: some city government agencies and public school teachers/education professionals are not counted):

TAMPA

Residents per employee   79
Population: 335,709
Employees: 4,244
Annual payroll: $540,168,672
Average compensation: $127,278
 

ST PETERSBURG

Residents per employee   83
Population: 244,769
Employees: 2,943
Annual payroll: $170,042,328
Average compensation: $57,778
 
 

ORLANDO

Residents per employee   85
Population: 238,300
Employees: 2,799
Annual payroll: $338,968,872
Average compensation: $121,103
 
 

JACKSONVILLE

Residents per employee   87
Population: 821,784
Employees: 9,368
Annual payroll: $1,037,019,744
Average compensation: $110,698
 

MIAMI

Residents per employee   101
Population: 399,457
Employees: 3,923
Annual payroll: $479,194,080
Average compensation: $122,149
 
 

RELATED COLUMNS:

New Poll: Detroit Bankruptcy Popular in Michigan

A whole bunch of really depressing facts about Detroit

2 replies

Trackbacks & Pingbacks

  1. […] Click Here To Read The Rest of: Five Florida cities that may be future Detroits […]

Leave a Reply

Want to join the discussion?
Feel free to contribute!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *