Employment finally rebounds

Florida's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate is 11.1%, 0.2 percentage points lower than it was in March 2010. This marks the first time Florida's adjusted unemployment rate has fallen over the year since 2006, according to the Agency for Workforce Innovation.

The raw data is even more encouraging: Florida's unadjusted rate for March is 10.6%, down from 11.3% a year ago.

On average, Gulf Coast counties' unemployment rates fell by 1.1 percentage points over the year. Collier County's 10.2% rate is the region's lowest, the result of 376 net jobs being added to the economy, plus a 1% decline in the size of its labor force.