Palm Beach County unemployment rate bests state, U.S. for 8th month in row
As the COVID-19 pandemic eased and vaccinations became widely available, Palm Beach County’s jobless rate for April held steady at 4.7 percent – below both the 5.7 percent national rate and Florida’s 5.1 percent rate for the eighth consecutive month, local and state officials said Friday.
The county’s unemployment rate remained unchanged from March.
April also marks the second time in a year that the county’s unemployment dropped below the year-ago rate, which was a record-high 14.7 percent in April 2020, based on the latest monthly reports released Friday by CareerSource Palm Beach County and the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity. They noted that all numbers had not been seasonally adjusted.
“For the first time in more than a year, there are over-the-year job gains in all but one industry sector,” Julia Dattolo, president and chief executive of CareerSource Palm Beach County, the nonprofit chartered by the state to lead workforce development in Palm Beach County, said in a prepared statement.
Government was the only sector in the county that lost jobs compared with the same period last year, with a decline of 1,600. The largest gain was in the leisure-hospitality sector, with a 30,300 increase.
On a percentage basis, job gains in April were led by the leisure-hospitality sector with 60.8 percent over-the-year job growth, besting a statewide gain of 40.6 percent in that sector.
Restaurants and hotels have reported they are having difficulty finding employees, with some blaming stimulus and unemployment payments for a tight supply of potential hires. Other experts say that other industries snatched up workers while restaurants were shut down.
Florida has experienced 12 consecutive months of job growth, gaining 18,800 private sector jobs in the month of April, state officials said. From April 2020 to April 2021, Florida has gained a total of 795,800 private sector jobs.
Total nonagricultural employment in Palm Beach County is 619,200, adding 74,400 jobs over the year. The county’s labor force also increased over the year to 739,543, up 58,793 from April 2020, which means more people either are working or looking for work.
Tom Veenstra, a vice president of Career Source Palm Beach County, said April was an improvement over March as 5,000 more people were in the workforce.
“Generally, when that happens, the unemployment rates goes up. In this case, we’ve held steady. That is good news,” Veenstra said.
Other improvements include:
* Eighty-nine percent of the jobs in the county have been recovered since the period of highest unemployment in 2020, and the number of those working now is nearing the number of those working when the pandemic began. There is employment and economic growth being driven by increased consumer spending, falling COVID cases and expanded vaccine rollouts.
* For more than a year, the county’s unemployment rate stayed below other major state markets, including Miami-Dade County, Broward County and the Greater Orlando area. These areas with large numbers of theme parks, cruise ships and international flight traffic have taken the longest time to recover.
* The Business Development Board of Palm Beach County continues to announce new projects with hundreds of jobs in the pipeline. Projects recently announced include the mortgage lender NewDay USA creating 600 new jobs in downtown West Palm Beach with an average salary of $90,000.
There also appears to be a movement back to the office after more than a year of working at home.
“There is a dichotomy going on. A lot of people would like remote work, but most companies are going back into the office,” said Randy McDermott, metro market manager for Palm Beach and the Treasure Coast at human resources consultant Robert Half International.
Although at the early part of the pandemic, it was thought that no one would ever go into the office again, and commercial real estate would be obliterated, that is not bearing out, McDermott said.
“Companies are repopulating their offices,” McDermott said. “What I hear from businesses is that they do not get the productivity from the people who are remote.”