WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Today, Governor Rick Scott announced that the West Palm Beach area had an increase of 22,600 new private-sector jobs in the past year, the fourth-highest number of jobs among all Florida metro areas, making the total number of new private-sector jobs created in the West Palm Beach area 130,700 since December 2010. The area’s unemployment rate was 3.0 percent in November, down 0.8 percentage point in the past year. Statewide, Florida businesses created 23,000 new jobs in November bringing the total number of new private-sector jobs created in Florida to 1,673,500 since December 2010.

To see the statewide job creation information, click here.

The industry with the highest growth over the year in the West Palm Beach area was leisure and hospitality with 7,000 new jobs. In November, the West Palm Beach area had 26,532 job openings and of those, 7,826 were for high-skill, high-wage STEM jobs in November.

Florida’s unemployment rate of 3.3 percent represents a drop of 7.5 percentage points since December 2010; this drop is faster than the national decline of 5.6 percentage points. This is while 116,000 people entered Florida’s labor force, a growth of 1.1 percent in the past year. Florida’s annual job growth rate of 3.3 percent continues to exceed the nation’s rate of 1.9 percent.

To view the November 2018 employment data, visit www.floridajobs.org/labor-market-information/labor-market-information-press-releases/monthly-press-releases.

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