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Q&A – How Many Floridians Would Be Fired Under The Biden Vaccine Mandate?
Each day I feature a listener question sent by one of these methods.
Email: brianmudd@iheartmedia.com
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Today’s entry: @brianmuddradio I’ve heard you say over a half million would be fired by Biden vax mandate. How did you get to that number? I haven’t heard that reported anywhere else.
Bottom Line: Back in September when President Biden first tasked OSHA with creating a vaccination requirement as a condition of employment for most Americans, I began the process of attempting to see what the potential impact would be in Florida. It’s challenging because it’s a consistently moving target with ongoing changes in employment, along with changing COVID-19 vaccination rates within Florida’s workforce, but I’ve figured out a way to get to a pretty good estimate. First, here’swho caught in the crosshairs should the OSHA rule go through as of January 4th:
- Any employee working for a private enterprise with 100 or more employees
Of course, there’s the opportunity within the rule for those who’re unvaccinated to test weekly, at the employee’s own expense. It appears unlikely, however, that most companies will offer that option as it’dessentially require dedicated personal to attempt to maintain it along with additional reporting requirements to the federal government. For that reason, the best approximation of the potential impact for Floridians in the workforce impacted by the new rule, is gained by evaluating how many Floridians work for companies with 100 or more employees and how many of them are unvaccinated. It’s a lot of numbers so I’ll keep it as straightforward as possible. Here goes...
- Florida’s total workforce currently: 10.59 million.
- There are currently 1.11 million government employees in Florida
That leaves the state with 9.48 million private sector employees. Using SBA data, 68% of Florida’s private sector workforce are with companies with 100 or more employees. That leaves us with a total of 6.45 million private sector employees who work with companies that are in the crosshairs of the Biden/OSHA vaccine mandate. Now we’re halfway to getting to an answer. To figure out how many Floridians are in the workforce and unvaccinated there’s additional work to do. That additional work takes us to the state’s weekly COVID-19 vaccination report.
Florida’s weekly COVID-19 Situation Report breaks down vaccination status by age. The current median age of a Floridian in the workforce is 43.8. The current vaccination rate for someone who’s in their 40’s in Florida is 74%. That gives us the rest of the info that’s needed to make the final calculation. If we take 26% of Florida’s 6.45 million workers who work for private companies with 100 or more employees, we end up with 1.68 million Floridians in the workforce who could potentially be fired for non-compliance with the new OSHA rule if it were to go through. As you can tell my characterization of greater than a half million has been super-conservative. There are those who’dseek religious or medical exceptions and receive them, in addition to what are likely to a minority of employers who will allow for regular employee testing if needed. The conservative analysis I’veshared up to this point has been the fewest Floridians who would be fired.
The most accurate way to characterize the view of the possible should the Biden/OSHA rule go through is this. A minimum of 532,000 Floridians would lose their jobs as a result of the vaccine mandate with a total as high 1.68 million who could be. That’s anywhere from 5% to 16% of Florida’s total workforce as of today. Aside from the principle of protecting Floridians from forced vaccinations from the President of the United States, you see why the state’s prioritizing the current special legislative session. Could you imagine what would happen if almost overnight unemployment jumped by 5% to 16% in our state? If you think supply chain and inflation problems are bad now... What’s happening this week in Tallahassee is clearly about far more than partisan politics and Governor DeSantis’ future political ambitions. Should the Biden administration's vax mandate go through, without protections for Floridians, it’s certain that every Floridian would be negatively impacted.