TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Today, the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity announced that the Tampa area added 33,500 new private-sector jobs in the last year. The Tampa area’s unemployment rate was 3.0 percent in February, down 0.4 percentage point from one year ago.

The industry with the highest growth over the year in the Tampa area was education and health services with 12,600 new jobs.

Statewide, Florida businesses created 6,300 new private-sector jobs in February 2020. Florida’s annual private-sector job growth rate of 2.0 percent continued to exceed the nation’s rate of 1.7 percent. Florida’s unemployment rate of 2.8 percent represents a drop of 0.6 percentage point over the year. This is while 195,000 people entered Florida’s labor force, a growth of 1.9 percent in the past year.

To view the February 2020 employment data, visit www.floridajobs.org/labor-market-information/labor-market-information-press-releases/monthly-press-releases.

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