Tallahassee, Fla. — Today, Governor Ron DeSantis announced the West Palm Beach area added 1,000 new private-sector jobs in the past year. The area’s unemployment rate was 2.8 percent in November, down 0.5 percentage point from one year ago.

The industries with the highest growth over the year in the West Palm Beach area were professional and business services with 1,900 jobs, construction with 1,600 new jobs and financial activities with 1,300 new jobs.

In November, the West Palm Beach area had 26,959 job openings and of those, 8,571 were for high-skill, high-wage STEM jobs.

Statewide, Florida businesses created 10,300 new private-sector jobs in November 2019. Florida’s annual private-sector job growth rate of 2.6 percent continues to exceed the nation’s rate of 1.6 percent. Florida’s unemployment rate of 3.1 percent represents a drop of 0.2 percentage point over the year. This is while 200,000 people entered Florida’s labor force, a growth of 1.9 percent in the past year.

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

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