Rick Scott ran Florida's economy the same way Trump ran the country – cut taxes, recruit businesses, create jobs.
Now the man who followed him is handing the state back in worse shape than the national average.
And Scott just made sure nobody can pretend otherwise.
Florida's Jobs Numbers Tell the Ugly Story
The Bureau of Labor Statistics just confirmed what Scott has been warning about for months.
Jacksonville, Orlando, and Tampa all saw unemployment climb at least a full percentage point year over year.
Wildwood-The Villages – a retirement community packed with the exact voters who put Republicans in office – saw the single largest jump in the entire state.
Two point two percentage points.
Florida's statewide unemployment rate now sits at 4.7%.
The national average is 4.3%.
https://twitter.com/SenRickScott/status/2056822020667576551?s=20
The state that was supposed to be the model for Republican governance – the state Ron DeSantis spent years positioning as proof that conservative leadership works – is now performing worse than the country as a whole.
Scott isn't pulling punches about what's driving it.
"Florida lost almost 38K jobs year over year in March," he posted to social media.
"Florida had one of the worst-performing job markets over the past year."
What Scott Did That DeSantis Didn't
When Rick Scott walked into the governor's office in 2011, Florida's unemployment rate was catastrophic – nearly 11%.
Eight years later, he handed his successor a state with a 3.3% unemployment rate, a full point below the national average, and 1.7 million new jobs created.
That didn't happen by accident.
Scott recruited companies.
He cut taxes every time revenues came in.
"How can Florida become the state that everybody wants to do business with?" Scott told The Wall Street Journal this week. "Lower taxes, lower fees, a well-educated workforce, a regulatory environment that makes sense."
He's not describing a radical agenda.
He's describing exactly what he did – and what appears to have stopped happening.
Scott specifically named the kind of companies Florida should be recruiting: Embraer, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin.
Defense contractors and aerospace manufacturers – the kinds of jobs that pay real wages and anchor entire regional economies.
"You've got to recruit companies, you've got to talk to them," Scott said.
The implicit question hanging over every one of those comments is obvious: Was that conversation happening in Tallahassee?
The Long-Term Warning No One in Florida Wants to Hear
This isn't just a bad quarter.
Florida TaxWatch projects the state's unemployment rate climbing to 4.4% by 2027 before stabilizing around 4% by 2035.
The state's own Office of Economic and Demographic Research projects job creation hovering just above 1% per year – anemic by any standard – with an aging population creating additional fiscal pressure.
Scott flagged exactly this dynamic back in January: when your job economy stalls, your revenues stall.
When revenues stall, you can't cut taxes.
When you can't cut taxes, businesses stop choosing you over competitors.
Florida made its national reputation on breaking that cycle under Scott.
Right now, that reputation is running on fumes from 2011 through 2018.
DeSantis spent his time in office picking the right culture war fights – and he won most of them.
Disney. The schools. COVID lockdowns while blue states suffocated.
Those were real victories and Republicans were right to celebrate them.
But you can't pay your mortgage with a victory over a mouse.
Florida families need jobs.
The cost of living is rising – Scott flagged a Wall Street Journal piece on that too, noting it's "driving people away from the state."
A Republican governor who presided over rising unemployment, rising cost of living, and a jobs market ranking among the worst-performing in the country over the past year doesn't get a pass just because he won the right fights on other fronts.
Scott earned the right to say something.
He built it once.
Whoever runs Florida next is going to have to build it again.
Sources:
- A.G. Gancarski, "As the Gov. DeSantis era nears its close, Rick Scott keeps spotlight on Florida job woes," Florida Politics, May 20, 2026.
- Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Metropolitan Area Employment and Unemployment (Monthly)," BLS.gov, March 2026.
- Florida TaxWatch, "Florida Economic Outlook Report," FloridaTaxWatch.org, 2026.
- Office of Economic and Demographic Research, "Long-Term Economic Outlook Briefing," EDR Florida, 2025.
- Rick Scott, posts on X (formerly Twitter), April–May 2026.
