🌅 🚨 Florida Ranks 4th Worst for Jobs

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A new WalletHub study compared all 50 states across 34 indicators of job market strength and economic vitality, and Florida landed near the bottom 💼.

How Florida stacks up 📋:

The top 3 states for jobs:

Nebraska took the top spot because it has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country, the number of available jobs there grows every year, and people who land a job tend to keep it.

What it means locally: I have been tracking the unemployment rate in St. Lucie County every month, and September came in at 5%, down from 5.3% in August but still above the state rate of 4.2%. A study like this is one way of measuring a job market. The monthly numbers are another, and I will keep reporting both.

💬 What is the job market actually feeling like for you right now? Leave us a voicemail at 772-212-1504

The Treasure Coast Food Bank dedicated its new 132,000 square foot distribution center west of Fort Pierce this week. The $30 million facility includes a production kitchen that can prepare up to 25,000 meals a day, along with job training programs that help clients rely less on food assistance over time.

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The St. Lucie County Fire District announced services for Firefighter Paramedic Austin Hodge, who died in the line of duty Saturday after more than nine years of service. Viewing is Friday, Nov. 6, at River of Life Fellowship in Fort Pierce, with a memorial Saturday at Christ Fellowship in Port St. Lucie.

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Rory Greenberg owns the highest point in Indiantown, a mound that grew roughly 70 feet above sea level from years of waste at the former Florida Steel site, a federal Superfund property since 1983. He wants to build a 1.7 million square foot data center there called Project Growler. A proposed village moratorium would exempt his project because his application was filed before the council discussed it.

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If you've grown up in Fort Pierce over the last decade, you've seen Kirtus. He's usually outside on 25th Street working out, at just about any hour of the day, and he's been out there so long that he's become part of the scenery. Something I want to do with Sunland is take the things we've gotten used to around here and give them their due, so I finally pulled over to talk to him.

He's 75 years old and has been training for 62 of them, since he was 13. Before Fort Pierce knew him as the man on 25th Street, he spent 32 years in the military, including time in combat, and 37 years in the ring. He's a sixth degree black belt.

"Every place I live, I make my own gym," he told me. The equipment you see from the road has been there for the 12 years he's lived here.

The running started long before that. For 10 years, he ran 20 miles a day, every day of the year. When he moved to Palm Garden, behind Dixon's liquor store, he ran 10 miles a day for six years. Since moving here, it's been seven miles a day for the last 12. His day now goes like this: he runs his seven miles, comes back and trains for an hour or two, takes an hour off, runs again, then trains until it's time to stop.

I asked him about discipline, because I've been trying to make my own a Sunday through Sunday thing, in work and in life.

"I've been doing it for so long now, it's a part of my everyday life. If I miss a day, it mentally bothers me. And then I'm never satisfied. That's what I tell all my students. Never be satisfied. You may accomplish it, but in your mind's eye, I still need to work on my traps. Always reaching for that goal."

If he does miss a day, he doubles everything the next one.

He doesn't train alone, either. V and Terry, who manages a Planet Fitness, have been working out with him for close to five years, and people stop by all the time. He trains with a lot of cops, teaches at the PAL Center sometimes, takes kids to school, and teaches senior citizens at a wellness center on Okeechobee Road. All of it is volunteer work. "I know just about everybody," he said, and people around town tell him they've known him since they were little kids in school.

The pull goes both ways. "If I'm in there and I hear the clang, automatically I have to go work out," he said. "I can't sit there and watch you work out."

When he isn't training, he's tending his plants. His people were West African farmers, he told me, and the green thumb came with him.

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