Florida adds 10,100 jobs in February

Florida's jobs outlook improved in February after a dismal January report.

But Gov. Rick Scott still has a long way to go of fulfilling his central campaign promise: creating 700,000 jobs in seven years.

Florida has added 90,400 jobs in Scott's first 14 months in office, with 10,100 jobs coming in February 2012, according to the federal government's most recent estimate.

February's numbers helped offset a big backstep for Scott's promise in January, when the state lost 35,400 jobs (revised from its preliminary estimate of 38,600 lost jobs).

Florida is one of 28 states with significant over-the-year job gains, though its count of 72,300 added jobs trails more populous states by a long shot. Florida's population is poised to surpass New York's, but the Empire State added almost twice as many jobs from February 2011 to February 2012.

Scott isn't taking that lying down. He went on Fox News to announce that he's recruiting New York's top companies to Florida, pointing to a letter he wrote to 100 chief executives boasting of Florida's low corporate tax burden and sunny weather.

It's too early to tell if any CEOs will take up the former healthcare CEO on his offer.

He could use their help. Scott needs another 1,609,600 jobs to meet his original promise (700,000 jobs on top of projected seven-year growth of 1 million), and 609,600 jobs to meet his revised promise (700,000 regardless of the economy's performance).

Economic optimists might point to the state's unemployment rate of 9.4 percent, which remains above the national average but fell to its lowest point in three years in February.

Our task here is to focus on jobs. This promise remains Stalled.

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Lagging behind job creation promise

During the 2010 campaign, Gov. Rick Scott promised to "create over 700,000 jobs for the state of Florida." Those new jobs would be on top of the jobs state economists predicted would be created naturally, Scott said -- representing a total of 1.7 million jobs in seven years, according to economists' projections. Here's how Scott stands as of February 2012.