Tallahassee, Fla. — Today, Governor Ron DeSantis announced the Jacksonville area added 18,100 new private-sector jobs in the past year. The area’s unemployment rate was 3.5 percent in July, down 0.2 percentage point from one year ago.

The industries with the highest growth over the year in the Jacksonville area were leisure and hospitality with 5,100 new jobs, education and health services with 4,500 new jobs and construction with 4,000 new jobs.

In July, Jacksonville was among the top five metro areas in the state for online job demand with 27,157 openings, of those, 8,264 were for high-skill, high-wage STEM jobs.

Statewide, Florida businesses created 28,200 new private-sector jobs in July 2019. Florida’s annual private-sector job growth rate of 2.8 percent continues to exceed the nation’s rate of 1.7 percent. Florida’s unemployment rate of 3.3 percent represents a drop of 0.2 percentage point over the year. This is while 128,000 people entered Florida’s labor force, a growth of 1.3 percent in the past year.

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

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