TAMPA, Fla. — Today, Governor Rick Scott announced that the Tampa area added 28,000 new private-sector jobs in the last year, creating the third-highest number of jobs among all Florida metro areas. Tampa’s unemployment rate dropped to 3.4 percent, down 1.1 percentage points from one year ago. Statewide, Florida businesses created nearly 30,000 new jobs in December bringing the total number of new private-sector jobs created in Florida to 1,497,100 since December 2010.
Governor Scott said, “Last year ended strong with 28,000 new jobs created in the Tampa Bay area. Statewide, nearly 1.5 million jobs have been created since December 2010, and it is clear that we are on track to making Florida the best place in the nation for families to find new opportunities.”
The industries with the highest growth over the year in Tampa were professional and business services with 7,000 new jobs and education and health services with 6,100 new jobs.
The Tampa area remained first among the state metro areas in job demand in December with 40,143 openings. The Tampa area also continues to rank first in the state in demand for high-skill, high-wage STEM occupations with 13,179 openings in December.
As of December, Florida’s unemployment rate is at 3.7 percent, a drop of 7.0 percentage points since December 2010, faster than the national decline of 5.2 percentage points. In the last year, 185,000 people entered Florida’s labor force, a growth of 1.9 percent, which is nearly four times the national labor force growth rate of only 0.5 percent.
In December, 18,828 Floridians were placed in jobs by CareerSource Tampa Bay and the state’s other 23 local workforce boards.
To view the December 2017 employment data visit www.floridajobs.org/labor-market-information/labor-market-information-press-releases/monthly-press-releases.
