Florida’s unemployment rate is beating the national one. But the state had a slow month in job creation.
Florida’s June unemployment rate remains unchanged from May’s mark of 4.7 percent—two tenths of a percent better than the national rate. But State jobs chief Cissy Proctor says Florida continues to add jobs.
“This month were seeing our unemployment rate stay steady at 4.7 percent,” Proctor says, “We’re seeing our job growth still continue. Over the year private sector employers across the state have added 227,000 jobs.”
Meanwhile, the Governor’s office is touting just over a hundred thousand jobs created in the first six months of the year.
But in June the state only created 6,600 private sector jobs—or less than a quarter of the positions created in May.
Proctor says despite a slow month, businesses have openings in metro areas like Tampa.
“Tampa Bay, where we are this morning, is leading in job creation as well as our other metro areas around the state,” Proctor says. “An exciting note for Tampa Bay is that they had the most job openings across the state. They had the most STEM openings across the state as well.”
Proctor was in Tampa to announce job figures and new cranes built to load and unload a larger class of Panama Canal container ships.
