JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Today, Governor Rick Scott announced that as of January 2018, the Jacksonville area added 17,800 new private-sector jobs in the last year, creating the third-highest number of jobs among all Florida metro areas. Jacksonville’s unemployment rate was 3.9 percent in January, down 0.8 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 Jacksonville were trade, transportation and utilities and professional and business services, both of which created 4,200 new jobs. The Jacksonville area once again rounded out the top five metro areas in job demand, with 18,219 openings, and had the fourth-highest number of openings for high-skill, high-wage STEM occupations with 5,443 online openings.

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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