JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Today, Governor Rick Scott announced that the Jacksonville area added 20,900 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 3.5 percent in August, down 0.7 percentage point from one year ago. Statewide, Florida businesses created 20,000 new jobs in August bringing the total number of new private-sector jobs created in Florida to 1,615,500 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 5,800 new jobs, and professional and business services with 4,600 jobs. The Jacksonville area once again rounded out the top five metro areas in job demand, with 20,328 openings, and had the fifth-highest number of openings for high-skill, high-wage STEM occupations with 5,491 online openings.

As of August, Florida’s unemployment rate remained at a low of 3.7 percent, a drop of 7.1 percentage points since December 2010; this drop is faster than the national decline of 5.4 percentage points. In the past year, 121,000 people entered Florida’s labor force, a growth of 1.2 percent, which nearly doubled the national labor force growth rate of 0.7 percent.

To view the August 2018 employment data, visit www.floridajobs.org/labor-market-information/labor-market-information-press-releases/monthly-press-releases.

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