Florida Department of Commerce Releases Latest Employment Numbers

The Florida Department of Commerce has just released the September 2023 employment report. The Jacksonville MSA had an unemployment rate of 3.1%, which was down slightly from August. St. Johns County remained steady at 2.7 percent. Of the 916,293 people counted as part of the area’s workforce in September, there were 28,090 unemployed residents in the region – down slightly from 29,478 unemployed residents in August.

CareerSource NEFL reported a continued growth of jobs in the region. “We continue to see increases in manufacturing jobs, which is up 6.4 percent from September 2022. Leisure/hospitality with a 6.2 percent increase and financial activities posting a 5.8 percent increase, were the other largest gains from last September. Education and health services saw a 5.4 increase year-over-year,” said CareerSource Northeast Florida President Bruce Ferguson.

CareerSource NEFL reported the current top-five most advertised job occupations among all industries in the region included retail salespersons (1,159 positions), first-line supervisors of retail salespersons (1,015 positions), fast food and counter workers (697 positions), stockers and order fillers (670 positions) and first-line supervisors of food preparation and serving workers (562). In September, CareerSource NEFL received more than 2,000 open job postings from its partner-employers.