ORLANDO, Fla. — Today, Governor Rick Scott announced that August 2018 marked 41 consecutive months of the Orlando area having the highest job creation in the state, adding 51,500 new private-sector jobs in the past year. The unemployment rate in Orlando was 3.4 percent, down 0.5 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 the Orlando area were leisure and hospitality with 12,300 new jobs, and professional and business services with 11,000 new jobs.

In August, the Orlando area was second among state metro areas in job demand with 39,703 job openings. Orlando also remained the second-highest metro area in demand for high-skill, high-wage STEM occupations with 12,024 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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