More bad news from the Florida Department of Workforce Innovation. While the national unemployment rate remained at 9.7 percent for the second month in a row, Florida’s unemployment continues to creep up, moving from a record high of 12.2 percent for February 2010 to 12.3 percent for March 2010. In March 2009, unemployment stood at 9.6 percent, meaning almost 150,000 Floridians lost their jobs in the last year.

Liberty, Monroe, Leon and Alachua Counties all had unemployment rates of less than 8.5 percent. As the department’s report on the March unemployment rate notes, “Many of the counties with the lowest unemployment rates are those with relatively high proportions of government employees.”