Tallahassee, Fla. — Today, Governor Ron DeSantis announced that the Fort Lauderdale area added 18,700 new private-sector jobs in the past year. The Fort Lauderdale area’s unemployment rate was 3.3 percent in July, down 0.3 percentage point from one year ago.

The industry with the highest growth over the year in the Fort Lauderdale area was professional and business services with 7,700 new jobs.

Fort Lauderdale remains among the top four metro areas in online job demand in Florida with 31,905 openings in July. Also, the area had the fourth-highest number of openings for high-skill, high-wage STEM occupations with 9,351 job ads.

Statewide, Florida businesses created 28,200 new private-sector jobs in July 2019. Florida’s annual private-sector job growth rate of 2.8 percent continues to exceed the nation’s rate of 1.7 percent. Florida’s unemployment rate of 3.3 percent represents a drop of 0.2 percentage point over the year. This is while 128,000 people entered Florida’s labor force, a growth of 1.3 percent in the past year.

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

###