Miami-Dade shatters all historic jobs records

Miami-Dade’s ultra-tight employment market tightened even further in November as the county smashed employment records on three fronts.

The county registered its lowest unemployment rate ever with the most people ever working in Miami-Dade despite a spurt in the civilian labor force to a record total.

As Florida’s unemployment rate overall inched up to 2.9% in November, Miami-Dade’s jobless rate fell to an unheard of 1.4% low, leaving only 19,299 persons jobless, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. That’s a huge leap from May 2020 in the depths of the pandemic-induced slide, when county unemployment hit 12% with 144,847 workers jobless.

The county’s unemployment rate fell from 1.6% in October while the state’s rate rose from 2.8% in October. Miami-Dade’s prior record low in unemployment was 1.5% in September, when the total labor force was 25,500 fewer than November’s 1,411,950, the bureau’s figures show.

Total employment also soared to 1,392,700, well above the prior record of workers in the county in February 2020, the month before covid hit, when 1,375,740 people were at work.

Despite the rosy figures, Miami-Dade has lost jobs in two major categories in the past year, with construction employment down 3.4% to 51,700 workers and jobs in the information sector down 4.9% to 23,200.

The biggest jobs gain by percentage was in a broad range of services that increased by 9% to 51,900. The second-largest percentage gain was in manufacturing, where jobs rose 7.3% to 47,100.

The professional and business sector gained 6.1% employment to 222,600 jobs, and the broad sector of trade, transportation and utilities grew 4.5% in jobs to 334,000.

Other sectors registering gains were government jobs, up 3.9% to 146,700 jobs; education and health rose 3.7% to 216,800; and the sectors of finance and of leisure and hospitality each gained 22% in jobs.

In Florida as a whole, while still near a historically low unemployment rate, totals inched up with 324,000 people out of work in a labor force of 11.19 million, according to a report released Friday by the Florida Department of Commerce.

After spending the first half of the year at 2.6%, the unemployment rate for the state has slowly risen since July. The state’s record state low was 2.4% during the housing boom of 2006.

The state’s labor force grew by 350,000 people from November 2022 to November 2023. The unemployment rate in November 2022 was 2.7%.

“Florida has been leading the nation in new business formations since 2019,” Jimmy Heckman, the Department of Commerce’s chief of workforce statistics and economic research, said. “Each year since 2019, there have been more new business formations in Florida than in any other state. We think that is a huge factor in contributing to an increased demand for labor.”

Florida has seen employment increases during the past year in categories such as education and health services and trade, transportation and utilities.

Also, it has seen increases in categories such as leisure and hospitality and construction.

“The construction sector is one that we saw that was kind of disproportionately impacted by interest rate increases earlier in the year,” Mr. Heckman said. “Over the back half of the year, however, we have seen that industry rebound quite a good bit.”

The national unemployment rate in November was 3.7%, down from 3.9% in October. The national rate has been under 4% for two years.