From Charles Wood, Pensacola Bay Area Chamber of Commerce:
* Pensacola Unemployment 7th Lowest in State – For the month of November, Pensacola’s unemployment rate was 6.7%, that means out of 23 MSAs in the state we ranked 7th, ranking lower than Jacksonville, Tampa, and Orlando. The unemployment rate for the state was 7.3 with the highest unemployment felt in Flagler County, south of Jacksonville at 11.1%.
* iTen Wired video – Continuing to push our message out about the region’s innovation and technology sector, we have uploaded a video clip from our most recent iTen Wired Summit held at the Andrews Institute. You can see the video at the following link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ql3yw9hEPqc Note: the nice words from Dr. Story and our keynote speaker, Eric Greg. (iTen – innovation, technology, entrepreneurs)
* Real Estate & Prospect Interest – We hosted two out of town real estate firms this week (Jones Lang Lasalle and Marcus and Millichap) who were scouting the area for opportunities. We see this as a very good sign that investors are looking at getting their money off the sidelines and that they see Pensacola as a stable market for investment despite the national downturn. Additionally, we sent out state tax information as well as labor information to a Wisconsin-based company considering Pensacola as a possible location option.