Tallahassee, Fla. — Today, Governor Ron DeSantis announced that the Tampa area added 27,500 new private-sector jobs in the last year, creating the third-highest number of jobs among all Florida metro areas. The Tampa area’s unemployment rate was 3.1 percent, down 0.2 percentage point from one year ago.
The industries with the highest growth over the year in the Tampa area were professional and business services with 8,200 new jobs and education and health services with 5,500 new jobs.
The Tampa area remained first among the state metro areas in job demand in May with 60,032 openings. The Tampa area also continues to rank first in the state in demand for high-skill, high-wage STEM occupations with 19,726 openings in May 2019.
Statewide, Florida businesses created 16,000 new private-sector jobs in May 2019. Florida’s annual private-sector job growth rate of 2.7 percent continues to exceed the nation’s rate of 1.8 percent. Florida’s unemployment rate of 3.4 percent represents a drop of 0.3 percentage point over the year. This is while 124,000 people entered Florida’s labor force, a growth of 1.2 percent in the past year.
To view the May 2019 employment data, visit www.floridajobs.org/labor-market-information/labor-market-information-press-releases/monthly-press-releases.