Jacksonville’s official unemployment rate rose in January, as it normally does when businesses shed temporary workers who were hired for the holidays.
However, when the data is adjusted for that seasonal factor, the jobless rate in the Jacksonville metropolitan area — consisting of Duval, Baker, Clay, Nassau and St. Johns counties — continued to decline in January.
The official January unemployment rate reported Monday by the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity was 6 percent, up from 5.6 percent in December.
Meanwhile, the University of North Florida’s Local Economic Indicators Project said that when the data is seasonally adjusted, it shows Jacksonville’s unemployment rate fell from 5.9 percent in December to 5.5 percent in January.
Duval County’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate actually rose from 5.7 percent in December to 5.95 percent in January.
UNF economist Paul Mason said Duval County’s seasonal variation tends to be less than that of the entire metropolitan area, and that’s why the county rate increased.
However, Mason also said this is the first time since March and April 2008 that both the Jacksonville metropolitan area and Duval County jobless rates were below 6 percent for two consecutive months, so the trend continues to be good.
Jacksonville’s unemployment rate in January was below Florida’s statewide seasonally adjusted rate of 6.1 percent and the national rate of 6.6 percent.
There also was good news in the Department of Economic Opportunity’s survey of business payrolls, which showed that Jacksonville area employers added 21,100 jobs from January 2013 through January 2014, a 3.6 percent growth rate.
That beat Florida’s statewide growth rate of 2.6 percent and the national growth rate of 1.7 percent.
The job growth was led by a continued rebound in the construction industry, with grew by 9.4 percent in the 12-month period. Other strong growth sectors were professional and business services, which rose
by 9.3 percent, and leisure and hospitality, which rose 9 percent.
The one major exception to the trend was the financial activities sector, where jobs fell by 1 percent in the 12-month period.
The state agency’s report on January labor trends is delayed every year to give the agency time to revise some of its previous data, a process known as benchmarking.
The agency is scheduled to release February data for the state and metropolitan areas next week.
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