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    • COMMUNITY

    WAKULLA JOBLESS RATE AT 2.5%

    News Service of Florida

    Florida’s unemployment rate remained at a near-historic low of 2.6% in May and has been unchanged since January, according to a report released Friday by the state Department of Economic Opportunity.
    The May rate represented an estimated 287,000 Floridians qualified as unemployed in mid-May from a labor force of 10.998 million. It was down from 2.9% a year earlier and was below the national rate last month of 3.7%.
    Locally, Wakulla County’s unemployment rate is the lowest in the Capital Region at 2.5%.
    According to the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity, the regional unemployment rate for the Tallahassee Metropolitan Area, which consists of Leon, Gadsden, and Wakulla counties,  was 3.1 % for June 2022.The region’s June 2022 unemployment rate was 1.7 % lower than the region’s year ago rate of 4.8 % and was 0.2 %age lower to the state’s rate of 2.9 %.
    Leon County followed at 3.1 %. Gadsden County was at 3.6 %. There were a total of 6,012 unemployed residents in the region.
    The number of people out of work in Florida was up 6,000 from April, but down 22,000 from May 2022.
    A news release from Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office pointed to private-sector employment increasing by 17,200 jobs in May and growing faster than the national pace.
    Jimmy Heckman, the Department of Economic Opportunity’s chief of workforce statistics and economic research, said Florida’s numbers might be able to improve in some areas, pointing to population growth and the state leading the nation in business formations over the past three years.
    But the state might not be able to reach the spring 2006 unemployment rate of 2.4 %.
    “There’s a strong possibility that we could see lower unemployment rates in the future, but 2.6 (%) is a very, very low rate,” Heckman said. “It’s very close to the lowest rate we’ve ever seen in the state.”
    One area that has slumped is construction, which dropped 1,600 jobs in May and has been on a decline for five consecutive months.
    The decline is most noticeable in South Florida, while growth has occurred in the Jacksonville and Tampa Bay regions, Heckman said.
    Heckman on Friday didn’t address why construction jobs are in decline. Last month, Heckman attributed the drop to rising mortgage rates affecting demand for new housing.