Jacksonville has seen some of the best job growth in the state over the past year, but the area’s unemployment rate is not improving, according to the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity.
The unemployment rate for the Jacksonville metropolitan area — consisting of Duval, Baker, Clay, Nassau and St. Johns counties — was unchanged in August at 6.6 percent, the agency said Friday.
The state agency does not provide seasonally adjusted data for Jacksonville but according to the University of North Florida’s Local Economic Indicators Project (LEIP), when the data is adjusted for seasonal factors, the area’s jobless rate rose from 6.19 percent in July to 6.47 percent in August.
Unemployment is greatly affected by the seasonal factor of students entering the work force in the summer before going back to school in August and September.
“We’re not bouncing out of the summer period very effectively,” said UNF economist Paul Mason.
“I’m not as optimistic as I was early in the year,” he said.
Jacksonville’s unemployment rate was higher than Florida’s statewide seasonally adjusted rate of 6.3 percent in August, up 0.1 point from July, and the national rate of 6.1 percent.
However, Jacksonville is outpacing the rest of the state and the nation in job growth. The number of jobs at non-farm businesses in the Jacksonville area grew by 18,000 from August 2013 through August 2014, a 3 percent growth rate. That’s better than Florida’s statewide growth rate of 2.8 percent and was the second-highest growth rate of any major metropolitan area in the state, behind Orlando’s 3.4 percent increase.
Nationally, the job growth rate was 1.8 percent in August.
The fastest-growing business sectors in the Jacksonville area in August were leisure and hospitality, up 8.6 percent in the 12-month period; professional and business services, up 7.3 percent; and construction, up 6.3 percent.
The biggest decline was in the information sector, which fell by 2.2 percent.
The Department of Economic Opportunity also reported that Duval County’s unemployment rate was unchanged at 7.1 percent in August, not seasonally adjusted. When the data is adjusted, the county’s jobless rate rose from 6.79 percent in July to 6.95 percent in August, according to LEIP.
In the metropolitan area, the high unemployment rate in Duval County was offset by St. Johns County’s 5.3 percent jobless rate (not seasonally adjusted), which was one of the lowest of any county in the state. Clay and Nassau counties, at 5.9 percent, and Baker County, at 6 percent, were also below the state average.
Mason said the higher rate in Duval County, compared with the surrounding counties, may be due to the fact that Duval County is more urban and the other counties are more rural.
(904) 356-2466