Gov. Rick Scott appears to have upped his crisscrossing of the state since the start of the new year to announce the Sunshine State was getting new private sector jobs, something he described Tuesday morning as both the greatest success of his first two years and the greatest failure.

On Tuesday, the announcements were for 110 jobs and $6.6 million in capital investments by Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) in Temple Terrace and 16 jobs in Manatee County with the expansion of the aviation and marine products manufacturer Radiant Power Corp.

“Florida’s economy continues to head in the right direction,” Scott stated in a release accompanying the Morgan Stanley announcement.

“Since December 2010, Florida has added over 200,000 private-sector jobs. Morgan Stanley creating jobs in Florida is great news, but we still have a lot of work to do. We want to make sure that every Florida family who wants a job can find a job.”

These latest jobs won’t have any impact on the state’s monthly unemployment numbers, which are due out Friday.

Florida’s unemployment hit 8.1 percent in November, down 0.4 percentage points from October and marking the lowest number the Sunshine State has seen since November 2008.

Appearing on WCTV in Tallahassee, Scott was asked for his assessment of the first half of his ongoing term.

When it came to naming his top success and failure, he lumped numbers into his overriding theme since he first hit the campaign trail -- unemployment numbers.

“I think they’re both the same; I think we’d all like to have full employment, we’d all like to make sure that everybody who wants a job has one,” Scott replied.

“I grew up in a family where my father was laid off every November, so that’s frustrating. I grew up in a family without health insurance. So people need health insurance and they need a job.

“That’s the negative," he said. "The positive is, we’ve had the biggest drop (in unemployment) than any other one state. We’re heading in the right direction but we still have a lot of work to do.”

The announcements Tuesday from the governor’s office were the fifth and sixth state-linked job notices by Scott since the start of the year. He also has proposed offering new incentives to manufacturers to build additional business in Florida.

On Monday, Scott went to Jacksonville to announce he was pumping $38 million into JaxPort as a means of building a terminal and freeing up money to improve the waterway. The payoff, besides attracting large cargo ships into the port, is the eventuality -- hopefully -- of 3,500 jobs.

Last Friday there was the promise of 100 jobs through the expansion of DaVita Rx in Orange County. Earlier in the week, Scott was in Jupiter to declare 130 new jobs on their way with Parametric Solutions, and he was in Sunrise to say Bolton Medical Solutions was looking at 100 new jobs because the company will begin selling medical stents in the U.S.


Reach Jim Turner at jturner@sunshinestatenews.com or at (772) 215-9889.