Today, Governor Rick Scott announced that the Pensacola area added 2,000 new private-sector jobs in the last year. The area’s unemployment rate was 3.3 percent, down 0.5 percentage point from one year ago. Statewide, Florida businesses created 8,300 new jobs in April bringing the total number of new private-sector jobs created in Florida to more than 1.5 million since December 2010.
The industry with the highest growth over the year in Pensacola was leisure and hospitality with 1,100 new jobs. The Pensacola area had 5,110 job openings, including 1,291 openings for high-skill, high-wage STEM occupations.
As of April, Florida’s unemployment rate remains low at 3.9 percent, a drop of 6.9 percentage points since December 2010; this drop is faster than the national decline of 5.4 percentage points. In the last year, 125,000 people entered Florida’s labor force, a growth of 1.2 percent, which is greater than the national labor force growth rate of only 0.8 percent.
To view the April 2018 employment data visit www.floridajobs.org/labor-market-information/labor-market-information-press-releases/monthly-press-releases.
