Duval County’s unemployment rate continues to drop, falling to a seasonally adjusted 8.57 percent in April from 8.97 percent in March and 10.51 percent in April 2011.
The March and April rates were the first drops below 9 percent since January 2009, when the Duval County unemployment rate was 8.94 percent.
“The direction of the movement is good,” said University of North Florida economics professor Paul Mason, who adjusts the state’s reported numbers for seasonal factors.
Mason said he believes that Duval County’s unemployment rate will continue to fall slowly unless the eurozone debt crisis escalates, which he said would affect the area’s financial firms.
He also said that state and local government employment needs to recover, “which means the Legislature has to raise revenue to fund it.”
If the ailing European countries’ debt problems don’t further affect area jobs and if government jobs don’t decline more, Mason predicts unemployment in the county will drop to 7 percent by the end of the year and to 6 percent by the end of next year.
“If not, we will stay above 7.5 percent until 2015,” he said.
JAXUSA Partnership President Jerry Mallot said the recession has been over for a year or more. JAXUSA Partnership is the economic development arm of the JAX Chamber.
“The level of confidence in our economy has not been this strong since about 2005 or 2006,” Mallot said, referring to the peak years for area economic indicators.
A national jobs report Friday showed that employers nationwide added 69,000 jobs in May, the fewest in a year, while economists had expected a gain of 158,000. The report also said hiring was weaker in March and April than originally thought.
The national unemployment rate rose to 8.2 percent from 8.1 percent.
“I expect a bumpy process on monthly labor numbers while seeing a long-term decline in unemployment,” Mallot said. “Short-term, we may see some increase.”
Mallot said that world events impact the economy, “but we remain one of the most attractive growth areas.”
The national recession officially lasted from December 2007 to June 2009, although it’s generally considered to have lasted longer in Florida.
“Our unemployment rate has dropped from near 12 percent to 7.9 percent for the Jacksonville Metropolitan Statistical Area and is leading the state in recovery,” Mallot said.
“We expect that to continue and it will probably still take another two or three years for unemployment to be in the ‘normal range,’” he said.
The metro area consists of Baker, Clay, Duval, Nassau and St. Johns counties.
For April, Mason said the Duval County unemployment rate still was slightly higher than the rate for the five-county metropolitan Jacksonville area.
“Employment was up and unemployment down, but the workforce also fell by a couple thousand,” Mason said.
At the same time, the number of people employed has grown and the number unemployed has dropped.
Duval County is considered the employment center of the metro area.
A labor force does not include the people who are out of work and not seeking a job.
State numbers show:
• The Duval County labor force, defined as people working and looking for work, was down by 1,990 people from March to April and was down 1,380 from April-April.
• In April, there were 439,708 people in Duval’s labor force, down from 441,698 in March and 441,088 in April 2011.
• Employment was up 106 for the month and 6,827 for the year.
• Duval’s employment count in April was 402,837, close to the 402,731 employed in March and up from the 396,010 in April 2011.
• Unemployment dropped over the month and the year. Unemployment was down 2,096 for the month and down 8,207 for the year.
• The number of unemployed people fell to 36,871 in April from 38,967 in March and from 45,078 in April 2011.
The Florida Department of Economic Opportunity recently released the April unemployment rates.
In a separate measure, April numbers show total nonfarm employment in the metro area of 593,900.
Employment is heavily weighted toward services jobs.
Goods-producing employment constituted about 8.6 percent of the nonfarm jobs, while service-providing jobs accounted for 91.4 percent.
Overall, the state found that the area gained 1,200 nonfarm jobs over the year.
Service-providing jobs grew by 4,000, while goods-producing jobs dropped by 2,800 positions.
Within goods-producing industries, construction lost 2,600 jobs and manufacturing jobs dropped by 200.
Within service-providing industries, government jobs fell by 600 over the year while private jobs gained 4,600.
Within private service-providers, professional and technical employment grew by 3,400 positions and retail trade gained 2,700 employees.
Areas that showed lower levels of service-providing employment included administrative and waste services; telecommunications; finance and insurance; wholesale trade; and transportation, warehousing and utilities.
Duval’s unadjusted April unemployment rate of 8.4 percent was the third best in the seven-county region. While the metro area is five counties, the JAX Chamber focuses on the region that also includes Flagler and Putnam counties.
Flagler County had an 11.6 percent unemployment rate in April, lower than 12.2 percent in March but still the highest in the state.
Within the seven-county area, St. Johns County posted the lowest rate in April, at 6.6 percent.
The state also released information about average annual wages for 2009-10. The metropolitan area’s average wage rose 2.3 percent.
Mallot said job growth has been about 1.5 percent and will accelerate next year.
“Job growth continues to be robust in the life sciences and medical industry and information technology. Financial services continues to rebound and most of our targeted areas are growing,” Mallot said.
“Geographically in Northeast Florida, there is a high concentration of existing buildings in Duval County and it includes 60 percent of the population, so it is reasonable to expect that a significant amount of the growth will occur in Duval,” he said.
Mallot said St. Johns County captured the 2G Energy project and that all the counties are finding positive markets for new job opportunities.
The 2G Cenergy Power Systems Technologies Inc. company, part of 2G Energy AG Group Co., announced in March that 2G is establishing a 125-job U.S. production facility in St. Augustine to produce its advanced CHP — combined heat and power — clean energy power generation systems.
“In a broader sense, St Johns County and Clay County seem to be growing the fastest in terms of total population and new developments,” Mallot said.
Mallot predicts Downtown Jacksonville will attract more offices and jobs.
“Downtown has gained a tremendous amount of attention and it’s paying off,” he said.
“A number of companies are looking at moving offices to the Downtown area. Some are small and others are in the medium-size range of 100-200 people. The unified effort and level of excitement developing for Downtown should prove to be very successful in the growth of Downtown,” he said.
Asked for trends, Mallot offered three:
• Growth in information technology businesses. “Small companies are popping up everywhere and growing significantly and bigger companies are expanding operations in this arena,” he said.
• Absorption of office space. “Another trend is the filling up of existing office space that is required before you see much new construction. The availability of large blocks of office space is now very small, except Downtown, which could mean that bigger projects now find Downtown the only viable option without building new facilities,” he said. That could accelerate growth Downtown, he said.
• Flexible work policies. “More and more companies have work-from-home policies, called flex-work policies. This reduces some of the need for office space and begins to bring together trends that have been talked about for a long period of time,” he said.
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Metro Jacksonville April employment up 1,200 jobs
The Jacksonville metropolitan area of Baker, Clay, Duval, Nassau and St. Johns counties added 1,200 jobs in April 2012 over April 2011. Here’s where the jobs were created or dropped.
| Industry | April-April change | % change |
| Total | 1,200 | 0.2% |
| Professional & business services | 2,100 | 2.3% |
| Trade, transportation, utilities | 2,100 | 1.7% |
| Education & health services | 900 | 1.0% |
| Financial activities | 200 | 0.3% |
| Leisure & hospitality | 100 | 0.2% |
| Information | - 100 | - 1.0% |
| Manufacturing | - 200 | - 0.7% |
| Government | - 600 | - 0.8% |
| Other services | - 700 | - 3.0% |
| Construction, mining, logging | - 2,600 | - 9.6% |
Source: Florida Department of Economic Opportunity
Regional county rates April
Flagler County had the highest unemployment rate in the state in April. The lowest was Monroe County, at 4.8 percent. Rates are unadjusted for seasonal factors.
Flagler 11.6%
Putnam 9.9%
Duval 8.4%
Florida 8.3%
Baker 8.1%
Clay 7.5%
Nassau 7.2%
St. Johns 6.6%
Source: Florida Department of Economic Opportunity