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Economists say it is difficult to determine what impact the BP oil spill two years ago today had on Florida’s unemployment rate. The reason: Many of the fishermen who were impacted the most are not eligible for benefits and BP hired many to deploy boom on waterways, but state economist Rebecca Rust says BP did not share employment data with the state.

“A number of the hotels and eating and drinking places did receive payments, though from BP, so they kept their workers on the payroll,” state labor economist Rebecca Rust said. “So even though they didn’t have tourists at the time, their workers were still being paid, so the employment numbers held  out. And also, the hotels and restaurants had the clean-up workers who were in the area at the time. So, the labor statistics really did not show a major impact due to the oil spill.”

Hotels, Bars and Restaurants are showing some of the strongest gains in job growth in the latest unemployment report.