FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Today, Governor Rick Scott announced that as of January 2018 the Fort Lauderdale area added 11,800 new private-sector jobs in the last year, the fourth-highest number of jobs among all Florida metro areas. Fort Lauderdale’s unemployment rate was 3.8 percent in January, down 0.7 percentage point from one year ago. 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 industries with the highest growth over the year in Fort Lauderdale were professional and business services with 4,800 new jobs and construction with 3,100 new jobs. Fort Lauderdale remains among the top four metro areas in online job demand in Florida with 20,892 openings in January. Also, the area had the fifth-highest number of openings for high-skill, high-wage STEM occupations with 5,279 job ads.

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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