Economic Report on Florida's 2013 Job Growth

For the third straight year, the January edition of the Florida TaxWatch Economic Commentary looks at the change in jobs over the past twelve months in Florida.

Building on the increases seen in the 2012 job numbers, Florida’s economy shows continued job growth, with an estimated 192,900 jobs created during 2013. All of the major private sector categories experienced job gains, with only Total Government Employment experiencing losses, led by a decrease in Federal Government jobs.

The 2013 jobs report shows substantial improvements from 2012, when in these same categories 135,400 jobs were created in Florida. This is more than 42 percent net job increase over the 2012 numbers.

Further, Florida’s unemployment rate, 6.2 percent, remains lower than the national rate, 6.7 percent. More significantly, Florida experienced the second largest yearly percentage increase in nonfarm employment in the nation (2.6 percent), trailing only oil-rich North Dakota (with a 4 percent increase). ¹

Florida is also the state with the largest per-capita increase in jobs² when compared to the three other most-populated states in the nation-California, Texas, and New York.

1   Preliminary Seasonally Adjusted numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/laus.nr0.htm
2   U.S. Census Bureau 2013 population estimates were used for this calculation.

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