Jacksonville area businesses reduced their payrolls in March for the third straight month, the Florida Department of Commerce reported May 1.
The unemployment rate for the Jacksonville metropolitan area of Baker, Clay, Duval, Nassau and St. Johns counties declined even as the number of jobs fell, due to people leaving the labor force.
People are only counted in the labor force if they have a job or are actively looking for work, so discouraged workers who have stopped looking for jobs are not counted as unemployed.
The jobless rate in the metropolitan area fell from 5% in February to 4.7% in March, as the labor force declined by nearly 5,000 to 841,002, the Department of Commerce said.
Nonfarm businesses in Northeast Florida reported a net loss of 6,200 jobs from March 2025 through March 2026, a 0.8% decline.
The recent job losses are the first for the Jacksonville area since the coronavirus pandemic. Excluding that event, these are the first declines since 2010, when the economy was recovering from the Great Recession.
The job cuts have been widespread across most private industry sectors but the biggest cuts in the 12-month period through March, on a percentage basis, affected federal government workers.
With the impact of cuts recommended by the Department of Government Efficiency taking effect in March 2025, federal government jobs fell by 2,200 in the Jacksonville area through March 2026, a 10.6% drop.
The largest private sector job losses in the 12-month period came from financial activities, down 3,300 or 4.5%, and trade, transportation and utilities, down 2,000 or 1.2%.
The biggest job gains came in private education and health services which added 1,700 jobs, or 1.3%. Florida had a 0.2% net loss of jobs statewide in the 12 months, the Department of Commerce said.
The state’s unemployment rate edged up by 0.1 percentage point to a seasonally adjusted 4.7% in March.
The agency does not provide seasonally adjusted data on local areas in its monthly reports.
All five counties in the Jacksonville area had declines in the unemployment rate in March, without seasonal adjustments.
Nassau County had the lowest unemployment rate at 4.5%, with Baker and St. Johns at 4.6% and Duval and Clay at 4.7%.