Jacksonville\u2019s job losses continued in February for the second straight month, but the unemployment rate fell slightly from January\u2019s post-coronavirus pandemic high.<\/p>\n
The unemployment rate in the Jacksonville metropolitan area of Baker, Clay, Duval, Nassau and St. Johns counties fell from 5.2% in January to 5% in February, the Florida Department of Commerce reported April 17.<\/p>\n
The January rate was the highest since it was also 5.2% in November 2020.<\/p>\n
Nonagricultural employers in the metro area reported a net decline of 3,500 jobs from February 2025 through February 2026, a 0.4% decrease in the 12-month period.<\/p>\n
The annualized declines in jobs were the first for the area since the pandemic. Excluding the impact of coronavirus-related shutdowns, they were the first drops in jobs since 2010.<\/p>\n
Florida had a statewide 0.4% decrease in jobs in February, also the second straight monthly decline.<\/p>\n
The state\u2019s unemployment rate rose by 0.1 percentage point in February to a seasonally adjusted 4.6%.<\/p>\n
The Department of Commerce does not provide seasonally adjusted data for local areas in its monthly reports on the labor market.<\/p>\n
All five counties in the Jacksonville area had a slight decline in the unemployment rate in February, without adjustment.<\/p>\n
Nassau County had the lowest jobless rate at 4.9%, with Baker and St. Johns at 5% and Duval and Clay at 5.1%.<\/p>\n
The February job losses in the metro area included a big decline in federal government jobs, which fell by 2,100 in the 12-month period, a 10.1% drop.<\/p>\n
The biggest private sector job losses were in financial activities which fell by 2,600, or 3.6%. The trade, transportation and utilities sector lost 1,400 jobs, or 0.8%.<\/p>\n
Those job losses were offset by a 2,600 increase in the private education and health services sector, a 1.9% gain.<\/p>\n
The leisure and hospitality sector added 1,800 jobs, or 2%.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jacksonville\u2019s job losses continued in February for the second straight month, but the unemployment rate fell slightly from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":79979,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-236362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236362\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}