Northeast Florida

ECONOMIC LIFE

Financial/Insurance Services
The banking and insurance industries have long been key components of Jacksonville’s economy, employing 55,000 workers, and the numbers are growing:

• Citibank has hired 200 new employees and plans to hire 200 more at its south side Jacksonville offices.

• JPMorgan Chase, with some 3,800 employees in Jacksonville already, plans to add 250 more along with 66,000 sq. ft. to its existing home-lending operations.

• Florida Blue (formerly Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Florida) will add 200 jobs in Jacksonville to manage a Medicare administrative contract recently acquired by one of its subsidiary firms.

Healthcare
Northeast Florida earns an “A” for availability of high-quality and specialized healthcare.The healthcare sector accounts for 13% of the local workforce; add in health insurance companies, medical device manufacturers and other healthcare- and bioscience-related enterprises and that number jumps to 20%. Healthcare options here include:

• Baptist Health System: Jacksonville’s largest private employer with five hospitals. Baptist Clay, under construction in Clay County, will include an emergency center and medical building.

• Nemours Children’s Clinic: providing specialty pediatric care.

• Mayo Clinic: Top-notch healthcare services and cutting-edge research in Alzheimer’s disease and other chronic conditions. In May 2012, announced plans to construct a primary care center on Jacksonville’s south side and to add nearly 100 beds to its main campus. The $97-million expansion is expected to generate 400 jobs.

• Shands Jacksonville: The city’s only Level 1 trauma center plans to build a $125-million, 110-bed community hospital on the city’s north side.

Defense
16 of every 100 Jacksonville-area residents are connected with the Navy, through active or reserve duty, or as retirees, civilian employees or members of a military family, resulting in an annual economic impact of $6.1 billion. Four Navy installations directly employ more than 56,000 military and civilian workers. Each year, some 4,100 highly trained personnel exit or retire from service in Northeast Florida, and 80% of them choose to remain in the region, bringing their military-honed skills in electronics, technical maintenance, repair and management to local employers.

Logistics/Distribution
40,000 employed in distribution and warehousing makes logistics one of Northwest Florida’s strongest industry sectors.

• In 2011, 8.1 million tons of cargo passed through JaxPort, an increase of 100,000 tons from 2010 thanks in large part to a rise in international freight from Asia. JaxPort remains the nation’s No. 1 for vehicle exports.

• Jacksonville International Airport offers daily non-stop service to 25 cities.

• CSX, Norfolk Southern and RailAmerica provide rails that can reach a potential 45 million customers within eight hours.

• I-95, I-295 and I-10 intersect at Jacksonville; I-75 is just 60 miles away. Another 17 state and county highways link the region to Georgia and the rest of Florida.

Tags: Northeast, Business Florida