Jacksonville’s unemployment rate remained basically stable in January, despite the downsizing of some businesses after the December holidays.
The jobless rate in the Jacksonville metropolitan area — consisting of Duval, Baker, Clay, Nassau and St. Johns counties — rose from 5.3 percent in December to 5.8 percent in January, according to data announced Tuesday by the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity.
However, the state agency does not adjust its data for seasonal trends, which greatly impacts the January labor numbers every year.
“There are usually layoffs and reductions in January,” said University of North Florida economist Paul Mason.
UNF’s Local Economic Indicators Project reported when the data is seasonally adjusted to account for that trend, it shows the Jacksonville area unemployment rate actually fell slightly from 5.58 percent in December to 5.50 percent in January.
Duval County’s unemployment rate rose from 5.7 percent to 6.2 percent last month, according to state data, and LEIP’s seasonally adjusted data also shows a big increase from 5.52 percent in December to 6.08 percent in January. Mason said better employment reports from the other four counties kept the overall metropolitan area rate stable.
The Department of Economic Opportunity also said that jobs on business payrolls in the Jacksonville area grew by 19,000, or 3.1 percent, from January 2014 through January 2015.
The data came a week after employment firm ManpowerGroup reported Jacksonville has the second best employment outlook among the largest 100 MSAs in the U.S., behind Boise, Idaho, according to a quarterly survey.
Manpower found that 31 percent of Jacksonville area businesses surveyed plan to add workers this spring, while only 1 percent expect to reduce staff.
The January labor market report from the Department of Economic Opportunity is delayed by a few weeks every year so that the agency can make annual adjustments to its data.
One major adjustment this year involved changes in Metropolitan Statistical Areas, or MSAs, after the federal government redefined some MSAs two years ago.
Palm Coast was formerly a separate MSA consisting of only Flagler County, but Flagler and Volusia counties have now been combined into a new MSA called Deltona-Daytona Beach-Ormond Beach.
That might seem unusual because Flagler County also has close business ties to the Jacksonville area. For example, the JAXUSA Partnership is an economic development organization for seven Northeast Florida counties, with Flagler and Putnam counties added to the five-county Jacksonville MSA.
Putnam County is not included in any MSA, but Putnam had the highest unemployment rate of any individual county in the state in January at 8.4 percent.
The Palm Coast area, which is heavily dependent on home construction, was hit hard by the last recession and consistently had one of the highest unemployment rates of any MSA in the state in recent years.
According to the latest data, the Deltona-Daytona Beach-Ormond Beach area’s jobless rate was 6.4 percent in January, not seasonally adjusted.
Statewide, the unemployment rate was unchanged in January on a seasonally adjusted basis at 5.7 percent.
The Department of Economic Opportunity will report February labor data for Jacksonville and other areas next week, as it gets back to its normal monthly schedule.
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