WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Today, Governor Rick Scott announced that as of January 2018 the West Palm Beach area added 6,300 new private-sector jobs in the last year. The area’s unemployment rate was 3.9 percent in January, down 0.8 percentage point in the last year. Statewide, Florida businesses created more than 10,000 new jobs in January, bringing the total number of new private-sector jobs created in Florida to nearly 1.5 million since December 2010.

The industry with the highest growth over the year in West Palm Beach was leisure and hospitality with 4,800 new jobs. In January, the West Palm Beach area had 16,106 job openings and of those, 4,309 were for high-skill, high-wage STEM jobs.

As of January, Florida’s unemployment rate is at 3.9 percent, a drop of 6.9 percentage points since December 2010; this drop is faster than the national decline of 5.2 percentage points. In the last year, 137,000 people entered Florida’s labor force, a growth of 1.4 percent, which is nearly one and a half times the national labor force growth rate of only 0.9 percent. 

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

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WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Today, Governor Rick Scott announced that as of January 2018 the West Palm Beach area added 6,300 new private-sector jobs in the last year. The area’s unemployment rate was 3.9 percent in January, down 0.8 percentage point in the last year. Statewide, Florida businesses created more than 10,000 new jobs in January, bringing the total number of new private-sector jobs created in Florida to nearly 1.5 million since December 2010.

The industry with the highest growth over the year in West Palm Beach was leisure and hospitality with 4,800 new jobs. In January, the West Palm Beach area had 16,106 job openings and of those, 4,309 were for high-skill, high-wage STEM jobs.

As of January, Florida’s unemployment rate is at 3.9 percent, a drop of 6.9 percentage points since December 2010; this drop is faster than the national decline of 5.2 percentage points. In the last year, 137,000 people entered Florida’s labor force, a growth of 1.4 percent, which is nearly one and a half times the national labor force growth rate of only 0.9 percent. 

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

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