Jacksonville’s unemployment rate fell in December, as the area’s labor market ended 2016 on a high note.
The unemployment rate for the Jacksonville metropolitan area — consisting of Duval, Baker, Clay, Nassau and St. Johns counties — fell from 4.7 percent in November to 4.4 percent last month, the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity said Friday.
December is normally a month when unemployment falls as businesses bulk up their staffs for the holiday season, but the Jacksonville area jobless rate was lower than the December 2015 rate of 4.5 percent.
Seasonally adjusted data for the Jacksonville area was not available.
Florida’s statewide unemployment rate fell by 0.2 percentage points to 4.7 percent before seasonal adjustments but after the adjustments, the rate was unchanged at 4.9 percent, the state agency said.
Duval County’s unemployment rate fell from 5 percent in November to 4.7 percent last month. St. Johns County fell by 0.2 points to 3.6 percent, but the county lost its standing of having the second-best unemployment rate in the state. Hamilton County dropped to 3.4 percent in December to move into second place, with Monroe County remaining the lowest at 3 percent.
Jacksonville area businesses reported a net gain of 22,100 jobs in the 12 months through December, a 3.3 percent annual gain.
The biggest increases came in the leisure and hospitality sector, up 8.2 percent, and the construction industry, up 6.6 percent.
The information industry continued to be the only major private sector industry losing jobs, down 2.2 percent.
Statewide, Florida’s job growth was 3.1 percent.
While labor market trends are improving, a report this month from the Florida Legislature’s Office of Economic and Demographic Research, said the data has likely been impacted by long-term unemployed people who have become discouraged and stopped looking for jobs.
When people are not actively looking for work, they are considered out of the labor force and not counted as unemployed.
“The significant size and composition of the long-term unemployed group (162,000 persons or 34 percent of all unemployed in October) may be confounding some of the trend results. The equivalent percentage from the United States as a whole was only 25 percent,” it said.
The report said the most recent data shows Florida’s labor participation rate was 59 percent in October, down from its 64 percent peak in early 2007.
With Florida’s working-age population growing, the state needs to create a lot more jobs to increase the participation rate, the report said.
“It would take the creation of an additional 920,000 jobs for the same percentage of the total population 16 years and over to be working as was the case at the peak. However, a significant number of older Floridians who are currently out of the labor force may never return to work because they are on disability and/or they are now nearing retirement age,” it said.