By Jim Turner, The News Service of Florida<\/p>\n
For the first time since the end of 2024, Florida\u2019s unemployment rate went down last month.<\/p>\n
A report released Friday by the Department of Commerce shows the state\u2019s jobless rate for June at 4.7 percent, a reduction from 4.8 percent the prior two months. The rate is still 0.5 percentage points higher than the national average.<\/p>\n
Driven by increases in restaurant, hotel, health care, transportation and warehousing jobs last month, the state saw an 11,100 increase, 0.1 percent, in overall new positions from May to June.<\/p>\n
The June numbers show 525,000 Floridians qualified as out-of-work, up 107,000 from a year earlier, from a workforce of 11.14 million, up 56,000 in the same time.<\/p>\n
The state\u2019s unemployment rate had been on a gradual upward trend since ticking down from 3.5 percent in November 2024 to 3.4 percent in December 2024.<\/p>\n
Nationally, the jobless rate stands at 4.2 percent, up from 4.1 percent a year earlier.<\/p>\n
Even with the one-month decline, the state\u2019s unemployment rate stands 0.9 percentage points higher than a year ago.<\/p>\n
Construction jobs have decreased by 3,200 over the past year, including a 900 drop from May to June. Positions in the retail trade were up 100 from May to June but still are down 5,900 from a year earlier.<\/p>\n
The field of finance and insurance reported adding 1,600 positions in the past month, but is still down 8,700 over the year.<\/p>\n
Real estate jobs dropped by 1,000 and are down 4,200 over the last 12 months.<\/p>\n
Governments in Florida shed 900 jobs in the past month and 10,500 over the year, with the federal government accounting for 7,700 of the decrease over the past year.<\/p>\n
The biggest gain over the past year involved health care and social assistance, adding 5,500 in the past month and 32,400 on the year.<\/p>\n
The area of transportation, warehousing, and utilities grew by 4,100 in June, which put the field at a positive 900 over the past year.<\/p>\n
Manufacturing is up 400 on the year after reporting the addition of 600 positions in June.<\/p>\n
Educational services, which are up 6,600 jobs on the year, posted a drop of 500 jobs in the June report.<\/p>\n
Hotel and food service jobs grew by 4,000 in the June report but remain down 2,700 from a year earlier.<\/p>\n
South Florida continues to have the lowest unemployment rate, with the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach metropolitan statistical area at 3.9 percent, up from a revised 3.7 percent in May and 3.3 percent in June 2025.<\/p>\n
The Orlando and Panama City regions were next at 4.6 percent.<\/p>\n
The Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater area was at 4.7 percent. Jacksonville, Naples and Melbourne were at 4.8 percent. Pensacola and Sarasota both stood at 4.9 percent.<\/p>\n
Tallahassee has a \u00a05 percent unemployment rate, followed by Daytona Beach at 5.3 percent, Gainesville at 5.5 percent, Vero Beach at 5.6 percent and Lakeland at 5.7 percent.<\/p>\n
The Wildwood region, including The Villages has the highest unemployment rate at 7.8 percent, followed by Homosassa Springs at 6.7 percent and Sebring at 6.6 percent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Jim Turner, The News Service of Florida For the first time since the end of 2024, Florida\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":110393,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[232,234,233],"class_list":["post-346381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee-headlines","tag-tallahassee-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346381","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=346381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}