WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Today, Governor Rick Scott announced that the West Palm Beach area’s unemployment rate was a low 3.3 percent in May, down 0.6 percentage point in the last year. Statewide, Florida businesses created 19,000 new jobs in May bringing the total number of new private-sector jobs created in Florida to more than 1.5 million since December 2010.
To see the statewide job creation information, click here.
The industry with the highest growth over the year in West Palm Beach was construction with 3,000 new jobs. In May, the West Palm Beach area had 17,440 job openings and of those, 4,776 were for high-skill, high-wage STEM jobs in May.
As of May, Florida’s unemployment rate dropped to 3.8 percent, a drop of 7.0 percentage points since December 2010; this drop is faster than the national decline of 5.5 percentage points. In the last year, 124,000 people entered Florida’s labor force, a growth of 1.2 percent, which is greater than the national labor force growth rate of 1.1 percent.
To view the May 2018 employment data visit www.floridajobs.org/labor-market-information/labor-market-information-press-releases/monthly-press-releases.
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