Tallahassee, Fla. — Today, Governor Ron DeSantis announced that the Fort Lauderdale area added 14,700 new private-sector jobs in the past year. Fort Lauderdale’s unemployment rate is 3.8 percent in January, down 0.1 percentage point from one year ago. 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 Fort Lauderdale area was professional and business services with 6,300 new jobs. Fort Lauderdale remains among the top four metro areas in online job demand in Florida with 27,862 openings in January. Also, the area had the fifth-highest number of openings for high-skill, high-wage STEM occupations with 6,993 job ads.
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.