Jacksonville’s unemployment rate inched higher in May, as more people started looking for work, but jobs continued to grow in Northeast Florida.
The unemployment rate for the Jacksonville metropolitan area – consisting of Duval, Baker, Clay, Nassau and St. Johns counties – rose from 6.4 percent in April to 6.5 percent in May, the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity said Friday.
The state agency does not adjust its data for seasonal factors but the University of North Florida’s Local Economic Indicators Project said when the numbers are seasonally adjusted, it still shows an increase from 6.61 percent in April to 6.72 percent in May.
“It’s an influx of college graduates and college students into the labor force,” said UNF economist Paul Mason.
This trend normally happens in May and the seasonal adjustment accounts for that but this year, it appears more people are looking for jobs than previous years. If people are not actively looking for work, they are not counted as part of the labor force and as unemployed.
“I think there are more openings than we’ve seen in five or six years,” Mason said.
The labor force in Northeast Florida grew by about 8,500 people in May and about 6,500 of those found jobs, according to the state agency’s data.
Mason said he expects to see a similar trend when the June data is released, as high school students enter the workforce.
Economic trends seem to be looking up in the Jacksonville area. Mason also said that LEIP’s index of leading economic indicators for the area rose in May for the fifth time in the last seven months.
The index rose by 0.11 points in May to 112.33, after a very strong 1.69-point jump in April.
The Department of Economic Opportunity also had more good news in its report on the labor market. The number of jobs on employer payrolls in the Jacksonville area in May was 15,500 higher than May 2012, a 2.6 percent growth rate. Private sector jobs grew by 3.1 percent.
The growth was helped by a 5.9 percent jump in construction jobs over the last 12 months, another indicator that the housing market is rebounding.
The only employment sector to show better growth was professional and business services, up 9.4 percent.
While there was growth in many private sector industries, several sectors have lost jobs in the last 12 months.
The information sector was down by 3.2 percent, education and health services was down 0.9 percent and manufacturing was down by 0.7 percent.
Jacksonville’s job growth has been better than Florida’s statewide growth rate of 1.7 percent from May 2012 through May 2013. Nationally, the growth rate was 1.6 percent.
Jacksonville also has a lower unemployment rate than the rest of Florida, but the state’s seasonally-adjusted jobless rate did fall from 7.2 percent in April to 7.1 percent in May. That was the lowest unemployment rate for the state since September 2008, the state agency said.
Jacksonville’s seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate of 6.61 percent in April was the lowest since October 2008, according to LEIP’s data.
Nationally, the unemployment rate edged up by 0.1-point to a seasonally-adjusted 7.6 percent in May.
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