TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – State officials announced Friday that Florida's unemployment rate for February held steady at 3.9 percent. That's lower than the national rate of 4.1 percent.
The unemployment rate started to edge upward at the end of last year, but has remained unchanged for the last two months.
The latest estimates say there are about 398,000 unemployed people out of a workforce of nearly 10.2 million.
In the Jacksonville metro area, the jobless rate is 3.5 percent -- driven lower than the statewide number because Duval and other neighboring counties have lower unemployment rates than the state average. Once again, St. Johns County has the lowest rate in Florida: 3 percent. Putnam County's 5.1 percent is the highest rate in northeast Florida, and it has the fourth highest jobless number in the state.
“Florida businesses have created nearly 1.5 million jobs across the state since 2010," Gov. Rick Scott said in a statement. "This economic growth is also clear in Jacksonville, where businesses created more than 18,000 new jobs for families in Northeast Florida in the last year alone.”
National data shows Florida remains among top states in job growth over the last year. The state added 167,800 total jobs since February 2017. California added nearly 384,000 jobs, while Texas added more than 285,000.
Florida's overall growth rate for the last 12 months was 2 percent, which was the 10th highest rate in the nation.