Tallahassee, Fla. — Today, Governor Ron DeSantis announced the West Palm Beach area added 11,500 new private-sector jobs in the past year. The area’s unemployment rate was 3.2 percent in September, down 0.2 percentage point from one year ago.
The industry with the highest growth over the year in the West Palm Beach area was professional and business services with 5,700 new jobs.
In September, the West Palm Beach area had 23,620 job openings and of those, 6,705 were for high-skill, high-wage STEM jobs.
Statewide, Florida businesses created 8,700 new private-sector jobs in September 2019. Florida’s annual private-sector job growth rate of 2.8 percent continues to exceed the nation’s rate of 1.6 percent. Florida’s unemployment rate of 3.2 percent represents a drop of 0.1 percentage point over the year. This is while 154,000 people entered Florida’s labor force, a growth of 1.5 percent in the past year.
To view the September 2019 employment data, visit www.floridajobs.org/labor-market-information/labor-market-information-press-releases/monthly-press-releases.