Jacksonville’s unemployment rate fell in March, but the number of people working also dropped, according to a report Friday from the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity.
The jobless rate in the Jacksonville metropolitan area — consisting of Duval, Baker, Clay, Nassau and St. Johns counties — fell from 5.6 percent in February to 5.4 percent in March.
The state agency does not adjust the data for seasonal factors but according to the University of North Florida’s Local Economic Indicators Project (LEIP), when the data is seasonally adjusted, it shows the Jacksonville area unemployment rate edged down from 5.56 percent to 5.52 percent last month.
The number of people in the labor force in the metro area fell by about 2,400 last month, the third straight monthly decline, UNF economist Paul Mason said.
There are several explanations for the drop in the labor force, he said, including the possibility that discouraged workers have stopped looking for jobs.
When people are unemployed but not actively looking for a new job, they are not counted as unemployed in official statistics.
While people were dropping out of the labor force, the number of people counted as unemployed still fell faster than the number of people who were working last month, Mason said.
“That’s not the best of news, but the fact that the number of unemployed people went down was good,” he said.
Florida’s statewide unemployment rate was unchanged last month at a seasonally adjusted 5.7 percent, the Department of Economic Opportunity said.
The agency said Duval County’s jobless rate fell from 6.1 percent in February to 5.9 percent in March, but the agency also does not adjust county data for seasonal factors. According to LEIP, Duval County’s seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate fell from 6.13 percent to 6.07 percent last month.
St. Johns County’s unemployment rate fell from 4.2 percent to 4 percent in March, giving St. Johns the second-lowest jobless rate in the state for the second straight month. Only Monroe County, at 3.8 percent, was lower.
However, another Northeast Florida county, Putnam, continued to have the highest unemployment rate in the state at 8 percent. It did fall from 8.3 percent in February.
The unemployment data is gathered from a survey of households.
A separate survey of businesses found the number of jobs on employer payrolls grew by 16,700 in the Jacksonville area from March 2014 through March 2015, a 2.7 percent growth rate. That’s the same growth rate as February for the area.
Jacksonville has fallen behind Florida’s statewide job growth rate of 3.7 percent in that 12-month period. The Department of Economic Opportunity said all 24 metropolitan areas in Florida have increased jobs in the past year.
Nearly all major industry sectors have been growing jobs in the Jacksonville area.
The exceptions are the information industry, down 4.3 percent, and the finance sector, down 4.8 percent.
The Department of Economic Opportunity said the information industry is the only major sector that has been losing jobs statewide.
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