Tallahassee, Fla. — Today, Governor Ron DeSantis announced the West Palm Beach area added 13,800 new private-sector jobs in the past year. The area’s unemployment rate was 3.1 percent in May, down 0.2 percentage point from one year ago.

The industry with the highest growth over the year in the West Palm Beach area was leisure and hospitality with 4,400 new jobs.

In May, the West Palm Beach area had 25,521 job openings and of those, 7,428 were for high-skill, high-wage STEM jobs.

Statewide, Florida businesses created 16,000 new private-sector jobs in May 2019. Florida’s annual private-sector job growth rate of 2.7 percent continues to exceed the nation’s rate of 1.8 percent. Florida’s unemployment rate of 3.4 percent represents a drop of 0.3 percentage point over the year. This is while 124,000 people entered Florida’s labor force, a growth of 1.2 percent in the past year.

To view the May 2019 employment data, visit www.floridajobs.org/labor-market-information/labor-market-information-press-releases/monthly-press-releases.

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