The Jacksonville Port Authority’s economic impact has grown by nearly $2 billion over the past five years and the number of regional jobs tied to the port has increased by more than 1,900, according to a new study.
Nick Primrose, chief of regulatory compliance for JaxPort, presented the study findings May 3 to the Jax Chamber Downtown Council at the Jessie Ball duPont Center.
JaxPort spokesperson Chelsea Kavanagh said maritime research firm Martin Associates did the study. She said JaxPort orders the study every five years.
Primrose said the study found the port produced $33 billion in total economic impact in 2023, up from $31.1 billion in 2018. That is an increase of 6.1%. It also found that 28,194 people are employed in direct, indirect and induced jobs connected to the port. That is up 7.27% from 26,282 workers five years earlier.
Primrose said the port employs 11,318 people directly in jobs related to the movement of cargo through the port, such as longshoremen, vessel repairers, warehousing staffers and pilots.
That is up 4.07% from 10,875 workers in 2018.
Indirect jobs include workers for companies that are directly dependent on seaport activity, such as providers of equipment or other goods and services to the port. Induced jobs are positions supported by wages spent by people directly employed at the port for food, shelter, retail products, medical care, transportation and other needs.
Primrose described JaxPort as being lightly affected by the March 26 collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, which shut down the city’s port.
JaxPort says it has handled about 30,000 tons of paper products that were originally bound for Baltimore.
Shippers delivering cargo to Baltimore needed alternatives that were more in the mid-Atlantic region, he said, resulting in ports in New York, New Jersey and Virginia picking up most of the traffic. Primrose said most cargo that unloads in Jacksonville stays in Florida, with some going as far as Atlanta.
The bridge collapsed when it was struck by the container ship Dali. Primrose said the port of Baltimore recently announced that it had opened a temporary channel into the port and planned to have the deepest channel reopened within a month.