Tallahassee, Fla. — Today, Governor Ron DeSantis announced the Jacksonville area added 6,200 new private-sector jobs in the past year. The area’s unemployment rate was 3.2 percent in March, down 0.2 percentage point from one year ago.

The industries with the highest growth over the year in the Jacksonville area were professional and business services with 2,700 new jobs and education and health services with 2,600 new jobs.

In March, Jacksonville was among the top five metro areas in the state for online job demand with 25,767 openings, of those, 7,587 were for high-skill, high-wage STEM jobs.

Statewide, Florida businesses created 12,600 new private-sector jobs in March 2019. Florida’s annual private-sector job growth rate of 2.7 percent continues to exceed the nation’s rate of 1.9 percent. Florida’s unemployment rate of 3.5 percent represents a drop of 0.3 percentage point over the year. This is while 158,000 people entered Florida’s labor force, a growth of 1.6 percent in the past year.

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

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