By Lynn Hatter
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wfsu/local-wfsu-969641.mp3
Tallahassee, FL – Florida's overall economy continues a slow rebound. But Tom Flanigan reports the state's largest industry seems on a faster turnaround.
The first three months of this year were good ones for Florida tourism. Visit Florida's preliminary estimates say just over twenty-three million visitors came to Florida during the first quarter. That's a gain of more than three percentage points from the same time a year ago. Domestic visitor numbers were up by two percent. There was a much bigger increase, some fourteen percent, in overseas visitors. And more visitors also means more jobs.
Florida's tourism-related employment for the first quarter of this year was just over a million people. That's a gain of a bit more than fifty-thousand jobs from a year ago, or about five-and-a-half percentage points.