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 April, down 0.5 percentage point in the last year. 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 West Palm Beach was construction with 2,800 new jobs. In April, the West Palm Beach area had 17,944 job openings and of those, 4,649 were for high-skill, high-wage STEM jobs.

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.

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