The claws are bigger this year. So is the diesel bill.
Florida's stone crab season is three weeks old, and on the Nature Coast the catch itself is fine — bigger claws, production a little ahead of last year at The Crab Plant in Crystal River. The squeeze is at the fuel dock: AAA put Florida diesel at $6.31 a gallon in mid-September, up from $3.55 a year earlier, and it was still $5.81 days before the Oct. 15 opener. So far the season's answer is absorption — sellers holding last year's prices for customers, and fishermen taking less when the market won't move.
Florida leads a $40 million apprenticeship push — and applications just opened
The U.S. Department of Labor opened applications Nov. 2 for its Registered Apprenticeship Pay-for-Performance incentives — up to $6,000 per apprentice — and the $40 million program for shipbuilding and defense trades is led by the Florida Department of Commerce. It is projected to create nearly 10,000 new apprentices over four years, and applications are rolling until the money runs out. For a state short hundreds of thousands of skilled tradespeople, this is the training-pipeline side of the shortage.
A return of value to skilled labor
Immigration enforcement emptied the framing crews Florida builders built their business on. The framers who remain — the legal, skilled ones — now command $40 to $45 an hour, double the old rate. Builders call it being 'dead in the water.' Another way to read it: for the first time in a generation, the market is paying skilled American labor what it is actually worth. That was the point of the policy. This is it, working.
Who will build Florida? Start with who'd want to
Florida's construction industry is asking where the workers went. For decades the state ran one of the cheapest labor models in America — worker protections scored near the bottom of the country — and filled the gap with immigrant labor that had little power to object. Now retirements and immigration enforcement have arrived at once, the training pipeline the industry let rot can't cover the difference, and the generation it needs has heard the stories. The shortage isn't a mystery. It's an invoice.
Plenty of shrimp, no profit: San Carlos Island's fleet fights imports, diesel, and Ian's long shadow
Four years after Hurricane Ian wrecked the docks, Lee County is down to one commercial shrimping operation. The shrimp are as plentiful as ever — what's disappearing is the economics that let Florida families make a living catching them.
Florida needs skilled trades workers more than any other state — and ranks next to last in supply
A new national report says Florida has the highest demand for skilled tradespeople in the country, and almost the smallest supply of them.
Florida's minimum wage hits $15 — and the finish line moves with it
The $15 floor took effect September 30, the last step of the staircase voters approved in 2020. About 1.29 million Floridians were earning less — but a living wage here still runs well above the new floor.
First-time jobless claims jumped in Florida
An estimated 5,793 Floridians filed first-time unemployment claims in the week reported October 15 — the most in a single week since early August, and two weeks after the $15 minimum wage took effect.