Volusia County Unemployment Rates Decrease as Employers Increase

Ted Doran is a managing partner with Doran Sims Wolfe & Ciocchetti of Daytona Beach, Florida. Actively engaged in the community, Ted Doran is a founding member of Team Volusia, an economic development corporation for Volusia County.

Comprising the Deltona-Daytona Beach-Ormond Beach inclusive metro area, Volusia County is continuing to expand employment opportunities. Employers in Volusia County added 8,000 employees in the last year. Unemployed workers were reduced by 17 percent from the previous year.

The top five industries that added jobs in Volusia County were retail, professional and business services, construction, manufacturing, and leisure and hospitality. 

Volusia County has four main organizations devoted to area economic growth:
- Team Volusia, whose primary purpose is to create new businesses
- Volusia County Economic Development, which encourages sustained economic growth by recruiting new investments
- The CEO Business Alliance, which is composed of CEOs who commit financial resources and time to expanding jobs and job retention 
- The Department of Economic Opportunity, which encourages economic growth through state and federal financial initiatives.

The Volusia County School District

The managing partner of Doran Sims Wolfe & Ciocchetti, Ted Doran has served as school board attorney for Volusia County Schools since 2002. In this role, Ted Doran represented the Volusia County and Monroe County school boards in a case involving the Department of Education.

Located on the east coast of Florida and numbering more than 500,800 residents, Volusia County comprises 16 municipalities, and its largest metro areas are Port Orange, Deltona, Ormond Beach, DeLand, and Daytona Beach. The industries present in the county include tourism, light industry, farming, education, and variety of professions.

The Volusia County school district has more than 62,000 students. The school system has 7,300 employees making it one of the largest employers in the county. Over 50 percent of the employees in the district are skilled teachers, and are all certified by the state. Around 42 percent of the staff instructors possess educational specialist degrees, master’s degrees, or doctorate degrees.

Volusia County Schools is made up of 86 schools including elementary, middle, and high schools, as well as alternative, combination, and charter schools. Along 221 bus routes, 23,433 students are transported daily from 2,255 stops. The student population is diverse and it members speak 88 different languages.

For 2014-2015, the 2015 class received scholarships amounting to $28.6 million. In the American College Test, the district’s composite score is 20.1, exceeding the state average of 19.9. Volusia County Schools’ operating budget for fiscal year 2015-16 was $478 million.