Tallahassee, Fla. — Today, Governor Ron DeSantis announced that the Tampa area added 25,300 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 2.9 percent, down 0.4 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 7,700 new jobs and leisure and hospitality with 7,000 new jobs.
The Tampa area remained first among the state metro areas in job demand in April with 59,854 openings. The Tampa area also continues to rank first in the state in demand for high-skill, high-wage STEM occupations with 19,467 openings in April 2019.
Statewide, Florida businesses created 16,000 new private-sector jobs in April 2019. Florida’s annual private-sector job growth rate of 2.7 percent continues to exceed the nation’s rate of 2.0 percent. Florida’s unemployment rate of 3.4 percent represents a drop of 0.3 percentage point over the year. This is while 136,000 people entered Florida’s labor force, a growth of 1.3 percent in the past year.
To view the April 2019 employment data, visit www.floridajobs.org/labor-market-information/labor-market-information-press-releases/monthly-press-releases.