Scott met promise to grow Florida's economy

Gov. Rick Scott's 7-7-7 plan promised to boost Florida's economy and wealth in several ways.

"In total, Florida's economy will gain an additional 700,000 jobs, $74 billion in state GDP, $41 billion in higher personal income, $1 billion in total state tax revenues as a direct result of the increased economic growth," Scott promised when he first ran for governor in 2010.

As he nears the end of his two terms, we wanted to examine the state's performance on each component.

We gave Scott a Promise Kept for his pledge to create 700,000 jobs on top of the 1 million jobs that would already be created in seven years. Florida had added 1.49 million nonfarm jobs between the end of December 2010 and February 2018. If we look at the most recent data through October, the state added more than 1.6 million nonfarm jobs during Scott's two terms.

The broadest measure of the economy is gross domestic product, or the total value of goods and services Florida produces.

In 2010, before Scott took office, Florida's GDP in inflation-adjusted dollars was about $766 billion. It rose to about $883 billion by 2017, the last full year for which data is currently available from the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis.

That's an increase of $117 billion, well in excess of his promised $74 billion.

The growth is less impressive in terms of GDP as a percentage of the economy. In percentage terms, Florida's GDP growth "translates to 1.16 percent per year for eight years, which is very weak," said William Seyfried, Rollins College economics professor.

Seyfried found Florida's economy took longer to come out of the recession than the nation as a whole. But in some recent years, Florida's economy outperformed the nation.

Personal income has increased dramatically during Scott's tenure, according to federal statistics. This measure is all income collectively received by all individuals or households, and includes wages, salaries, investments, and bonuses.

In 2010, personal income totaled $725 billion. In 2017, it hit $1 trillion.

That's an increase of about $275 billion, far above Scott's promise.

"Comparing Florida to the U.S., personal income in Florida grew faster than the nation since 2013 after underperforming between 2010-13," Seyfried said.

There are many ways to look at state tax collections to include collections from fees, trust funds and more in addition to taxes from everyday commerce and assessments.

We're going to use the federal measure, which shows that state government tax collections grew from about $30.5 billion in 2010 to $37.2 billion in 2015.

Again, the growth is far above what Scott promised.

He earns a Promise Kept.