Tallahassee, Fla. — Today, Governor Ron DeSantis announced that the Tampa area added 31,000 new private-sector jobs in the last year, creating the second-highest number of jobs among all Florida metro areas. The Tampa area’s unemployment rate was 3.3 percent, down 0.2 percentage point from one year ago.

The industry with the highest growth over the year in the Tampa area was professional and business services with 10,900 new jobs.

The Tampa area remained first among the state metro areas in job demand in March with 56,208 openings. The Tampa area also continues to rank first in the state in demand for high-skill, high-wage STEM occupations with 18,139 openings in March 2019.

Statewide, Florida businesses created 12,600 new private-sector jobs in March 2019. 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 0.3 percentage point over the year. This is while 158,000 people entered Florida’s labor force, a growth of 1.6 percent in the past year.

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

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