More than 7,500 people gained work around Jacksonville last month but the area’s unemployment rate still rose to 4.4 percent, data that state officials released Friday showed.
Jacksonville’s metropolitan area was one of the state’s bright spots for job gains, the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity's chief economist, Adrienne Johnston, said. But state estimates of 765,492 people working last month remained about 8,800 short of the level before the pandemic arrived in March 2020.
“We’re not quite back to where we were,” Johnston said. “… Businesses are adding jobs back across the state, across industries. … [But] it’s going to take time.”
Unemployment statewide stood at 5.3 percent, using the same seasonally unadjusted measurements the state applies to metro areas. Nationally, the rate was 6.2 percent.
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