Math starting to work against Rick Scott on his centerpiece jobs promise

Florida's unemployment dropped 0.3 percentage points in April, but the number that matters most for Gov. Rick Scott actually moved in the wrong direction.

The state lost 2,700 jobs.

Scott promised during his campaign for governor to create 700,000 jobs in seven years as part of his signature plan to jumpstart Florida's economy. As we've written several times before, the extra jobs were to be in addition to those jobs economists predicted would be created no matter who was elected governor (Scott has since back-tracked on that condition).

Ultimately, we will hold Scott to what he originally promised, which amounts to creating about 1.7 million jobs over seven years. But even under Scott's much more generous scenario, the first-term governor is falling short.

Florida has generated 107,800 jobs since Scott took office (84,900 if you exclude January 2011, Scott's first month in office).

That's an average of 5,306 or 6,738 jobs a month, depending when you start counting.

To keep his word, Scott needs Florida to create an average of 20,238 jobs each month, every month, for seven years.

In order to hit the easier-to-reach 700,000-job mark, Scott needed Florida to create slightly more than 8,300 jobs a month, every month.

Through 16 months (15 if you decide to exclude January 2011), Scott has failed to reach either mark, meaning the state will have to grow jobs at an even faster clip in the months ahead.

For the record, it's not unusual for the unemployment rate and the jobs number to move in different directions. The state's unemployment rate is taken from a household survey; the jobs numbers are based on feedback from employers. The April figures are preliminary and subject to revisions.

Scott's jobs promise appears to be getting away from him, but we'll continue to watch the numbers before rethinking our rating. For now, this promise remains Stalled.