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In addition, "restaurants, hotels and other private businesses that cater to white collar government policy-making centers are more likely to do well, or at least hang on, even in tough times," Philipps said. As in previous months, the economically healthiest states were in the Plains and New England: North Dakota (5.21), Nebraska (5.93), South Dakota (6.16), Vermont (6.54) and New Hampshire (7.47). Stress levels fell in February even in the five states with the highest stress scores. Nevada remained the most stressed state with a score of 21.16. It was followed by California (16.24), Florida (15.2), Arizona (14.57) and Michigan (14.35). Two of those states, Arizona and Florida, saw the biggest drops in stress among all states in February. Arizona added jobs in mining, transportation, finance, education and health services. Florida's unemployment rate of 11.5 percent was much higher than the nation's 8.8 percent in February. But among all states, it added the third-most number of jobs
-- around 23,000 positions. The bulk of those job gains were in tourism and health care. "What you're seeing in Florida is a labor market that is now just starting to get back on its feet," said Sean Snaith, an economist at the University of Central Florida. "The metaphor I've been using for Florida's economy is a jumbo jet that is just at the start of its runway, and 2011 is that runway ... But the reality is we don't really take off until we get to the end of that runway in 2012, 2013." Georgia added nearly 15,000 jobs in February in professional and business services, health, education, construction, transportation, tourism and manufacturing. The most stressed counties with at least 25,000 residents were Imperial County, Calif. (30.77); Lyon County, Nev. (27.35); Merced County, Calif. (26.16); Sutter County, Calif. (25.99); and Nye County, Nev. (25.68). The least stressed were Ellis County, Kan. (4.14); Buffalo County, Neb. (4.46); Arlington County, Va. (4.55); Ward County, N.D. (4.61); and Ford County, Kan. (4.68).
[Associated
Press;
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
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