Jacksonville’s unemployment rate fell in February as more people sought jobs and were able to find work.
However, area businesses reported their payrolls remain significantly lower than they were a year ago, when the COVID-19 pandemic began forcing companies to shut down.
The unemployment rate in the Jacksonville metropolitan area of Duval, Baker, Clay, Nassau and St. Johns counties fell from 4.1% in January to 3.7% in February, the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity reported March 26.
The size of the labor force, consisting of people with jobs or actively looking for work, rose by about 2,000 in February to 786,054.
Meanwhile, the number of people saying they were employed rose by almost 5,000 to 756,782.
Duval County’s unemployment rate fell by 0.3 percentage points to 4.2% in February, but the other four counties in the metropolitan area had much lower rates.
St. Johns County, at 2.8%, had the second-lowest jobless rate in the state behind Wakulla County’s 2.6%. Baker County was close behind at 2.9%.
Nassau County was at 3.2% last month and Clay County was at 3%.
Florida’s unemployment rate fell by 0.1 point to a seasonally adjusted 4.7%, the Department of Economic Opportunity said.
The state agency does not provide seasonally adjusted data for local areas.
However, University of North Florida economist Albert Loh said when the data is seasonally adjusted, it shows the Jacksonville area jobless rate edging down slightly from 3.69% in January to 3.67% in February.
Duval County's seasonally adjusted rate fell from 4.54% to 4.32% last month, Loh said.
Adrienne Johnston, chief economist for the agency, said in a media conference call that 78.5% of unemployed Floridians lost their jobs involuntarily.
Johnson said 12.5% of the unemployed are people who reentered the labor force, and she expects to see more people restarting their job search as the pandemic impact eases.
“As we continue to see the labor force increase and move past that one-year mark since the start of the pandemic, we would expect to see reentrants increase as a share of the unemployed,” she said.
Although employment increased in Northeast Florida last month, nonfarm businesses in the region reported total payrolls were 22,000 lower than in February 2020, a 3% drop.
The biggest job losses continue to be the leisure and hospitality sector, which was hard hit by pandemic-related closures.
Payrolls in that sector dropped by 10,800, or 12.5%, from February 2020 through February 2021.
Almost every major industry sector has lost jobs in the past year.
The construction industry looked like it was recovering in January when it reported employment levels were unchanged from the previous year, but the sector lost 1,700 jobs, or 3.7%, from January to February.
The only major industry sector gaining jobs in the 12-month period was financial activities, which rose by 1,800 or 2.7%.