Tallahassee, Fla. — Today, Governor Ron DeSantis announced the West Palm Beach area had an increase of 13,400 new private-sector jobs in the past year. The area’s unemployment rate was 3.9 percent in January, down 0.1 percentage point in the past year. Statewide, Florida businesses created 10,900 new private-sector jobs in January 2019. To see the statewide job creation information, click here.

The industry with the highest growth over the year in the West Palm Beach area was professional and business services with 4,200 new jobs.

In January, the West Palm Beach area had 23,259 job openings and of those, 6,549 were for high-skill, high-wage STEM jobs.

Florida’s annual private-sector job growth rate of 2.7 percent continues to exceed the nation’s rate of 2.1 percent. Florida’s unemployment rate of 3.4 percent represents a drop of 0.5 percentage point over the year. This is while 161,000 people entered Florida’s labor force, a growth of 1.6 percent in the past year.

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

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