Tallahassee, Fla. — Today, Governor Ron DeSantis announced that the Tampa area added 30,700 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 2.6 percent in December, down 0.6 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 7,500 new jobs.
Statewide, Florida businesses created 16,300 new private-sector jobs in December 2019. Florida’s annual private-sector job growth rate of 2.5 percent continues to exceed the nation’s rate of 1.5 percent. Florida’s unemployment rate of 3.0 percent represents a drop of 0.3 percentage point over the year. This is while 220,000 people entered Florida’s labor force, a growth of 2.1 percent in the past year.
To view the December 2019 employment data, visit www.floridajobs.org/labor-market-information/labor-market-information-press-releases/monthly-press-releases.
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