If Florida is "backwater", then so is most of the rest of the country outside of a handful of overpriced cities where earning 80k is required to be able to afford a room in an apartment - not the whole apartment, and certainly not buying one.
I mean yea, they absolutely are economically speaking - especially when looking at where new grad college educated jobs are located [0].
Heck, most states have fallen into a technical recession [1]. Florida is weird simply because of how much tourism and retirement adjacent industries skew it's economy (eg. Elderly care, primary care, etc) - in fact, healthcare services (as in elderly care, hospice care, and homecare) is the only non-skilled industry that is seeing a significant expansion in the US.
I personally along with HN, other VCs, and PE funds have been actively following the MSO space for a couple years now because of this boom.
And I say this as someone who kinda likes Florida (Dr Philips reminds me and moreso the missus of bougie gated communities back in ASEAN - it's a nice place for us to Fat FIRE).
Oof that is a shame given how severely CoL has risen across much of the South. Salary expectations on the employers side is just too low, but then again, I guess most industries are low margins ones sadly.
If Florida is "backwater", then so is most of the rest of the country outside of a handful of overpriced cities where earning 80k is required to be able to afford a room in an apartment - not the whole apartment, and certainly not buying one.