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Gov. Scott: Jacksonville Created Nearly 22,000 New Jobs Over the Year

August 17, 2018
Today, Governor Rick Scott announced that the Jacksonville area added 21,800 new private-sector jobs in the past year, creating the fourth-highest number of jobs among all Florida metro areas.
Jacksonville’s unemployment rate was a low 3.8 percent in July, down 0.4 percentage point from one year ago. Statewide, Florida businesses created 26,300 new jobs in July bringing the total number of new private-sector jobs created in Florida to nearly 1.6 million since December 2010.
 
To see the statewide job creation information, click here.
 
The industries with the highest growth over the year in Jacksonville were leisure and hospitality with 5,100 new jobs, and trade, transportation, and utilities with 3,900 jobs. The Jacksonville area once again rounded out the top five metro areas in job demand, with 18,861 openings, and had the fifth-highest number of openings for high-skill, high-wage STEM occupations with 5,286 online openings.
 
As of July, Florida’s unemployment rate dropped to a low of 3.7 percent, the lowest since April 2007 and a drop of 7.1 percentage points since December 2010. This drop in unemployment is faster than the national decline of 5.4 percentage points. In the past year, 132,000 people entered Florida’s labor force, a growth of 1.3 percent, which is greater than the national labor force growth rate of 1.1 percent.
 
To view the July 2018 employment data, visit www.floridajobs.org/labor-market-information/labor-market-information-press-releases/monthly-press-releases.