Today, Governor Rick Scott announced that the Jacksonville area added 21,600 new private-sector jobs in the past year, creating the third-highest number of jobs among all Florida metro areas.
Jacksonville’s unemployment rate was a low 3.7 percent in June, down 0.5 percentage point from one year ago. Statewide, Florida businesses created 16,900 new jobs in June bringing the total number of new private-sector jobs created in Florida to 1,554,800 since December 2010.
To see the statewide job creation information, click here.
The industries with the highest growth over the year in Jacksonville were trade, transportation, and utilities, and leisure and hospitality each with 4,500 new jobs, and professional and business services with 4,400 new jobs. The Jacksonville area once again rounded out the top five metro areas in job demand, with 18,248 openings, and had the fifth-highest number of openings for high-skill, high-wage STEM occupations with 4,829 online openings.
As of June, Florida’s unemployment rate remained at a low of 3.8 percent, a drop of 7 percentage points since December 2010; this drop is faster than the national decline of 5.3 percentage points. In the past year, 130,000 people entered Florida’s labor force, a growth of 1.3 percent, which is greater than the national labor force growth rate of 1.2 percent.
To view the June 2018 employment data, click here.
