Tallahassee, Fla. — Today, Governor Ron DeSantis announced the Jacksonville area added 12,500 new private-sector jobs in the past year. The area’s unemployment rate was 3.0 percent in May, down 0.2 percentage point from one year ago.

The industry with the highest growth over the year in the Jacksonville area was leisure and hospitality with 5,600 new jobs.

In May, Jacksonville was among the top five metro areas in the state for online job demand with 28,447 openings, of those, 8,651 were for high-skill, high-wage STEM jobs.

Statewide, Florida businesses created 16,000 new private-sector jobs in May 2019. Florida’s annual private-sector job growth rate of 2.7 percent continues to exceed the nation’s rate of 1.8 percent. Florida’s unemployment rate of 3.4 percent represents a drop of 0.3 percentage point over the year. This is while 124,000 people entered Florida’s labor force, a growth of 1.2 percent in the past year.

To view the May 2019 employment data, visit www.floridajobs.org/labor-market-information/labor-market-information-press-releases/monthly-press-releases.

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