Gov. Scott: Fort Lauderdale Area Added Nearly 33,000 New Jobs Over the Year

Press Release

Today, Governor Rick Scott announced that the Fort Lauderdale area added 32,900 new private-sector jobs in the last year, the third-highest number of jobs among all metro areas. Fort Lauderdale's unemployment rate was 4 percent in June, dropping 0.8 percentage point from one year ago. Statewide, Florida businesses created 17,800 new jobs in June and the unemployment rate dropped to 4.1 percent, the lowest rate since June 2007. Since December 2010, Florida businesses have created 1,397,400 new private-sector jobs.

Governor Scott said, "Since December 2010, nearly 1.4 million jobs have been created for Florida families, including nearly 33,000 jobs created in the Fort Lauderdale area over the past year. I encourage Florida communities to apply for the new $85 million Florida Job Growth Grant Fund so we can make important investments in infrastructure and workforce training needs that will help continue this job growth across the state."

The industries with the highest growth over the year in Fort Lauderdale were education and health services with 6,800 new jobs and professional and business services with 12,300 new jobs, which was the second-highest of all Florida metro areas. Fort Lauderdale remains among the top four metro areas in job demand in Florida with 22,134 job openings in June. The area rose to have the fourth-highest number of openings for high-skill, high-wage STEM occupations with 5,515 online openings.

For 63 consecutive months, Florida's annual job growth rate of 3.1 percent is exceeding the nation's rate of 1.7 percent. In June, 22,977 Floridians were placed in jobs by CareerSource Broward and the state's other 23 local workforce boards.

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