Tallahassee, Fla. — Today, Governor Ron DeSantis announced that the Fort Lauderdale area added 15,800 new private-sector jobs in the past year. Fort Lauderdale’s unemployment rate is 3.3 percent in February, down 0.3 percentage point from one year ago. Statewide, Florida businesses created 24,300 new private-sector jobs in February 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 6,700 new jobs.Fort Lauderdale remains among the top four metro areas in online job demand in Florida with 31,507 openings in February. Also, the area had the fifth-highest number of openings for high-skill, high-wage STEM occupations with 7,939 job ads.
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 0.4 percentage point over the year. This is while 170,000 people entered Florida’s labor force, a growth of 1.7 percent in the past year.
To view the February 2019 employment data, visit www.floridajobs.org/labor-market-information/labor-market-information-press-releases/monthly-press-releases.