Florida unemployment rate higher than national rate for first time in nearly 5 years

Florida’s unemployment rate climbed to 4.5% in January, pushing Florida’s rate higher than the national rate for the first time in nearly five years.

FloridaCommerce, the state’s economic development bureau, released the January unemployment report this month. The agency’s regular monthly reports were disrupted by the government shutdown in October through early November, and the bureau has been slowly returning to publishing regular data.

The January rate is up by 0.2 percentage points from December’s figure of 4.3% in the Sunshine State.

“There were 499,000 jobless Floridians out of a labor force of 11.12 million. The U.S. seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 4.3% in January,” a FloridaCommerce news release said.

FloridaCommerce officials and Gov. Ron DeSantis previously bragged about Florida’s performance compared to the rest of the country. As of August’s unemployment rate release, the last regular jobless report before the shutdown, Florida’s rate had been lower than the national figure for 58 months in a row. December’s Florida rate was 4.3%, just below the national mark of 4.4%.

Despite the jump in Florida’s jobless rate, there were some bright spots in January. The number of seasonally adjusted nonagricultural employed workers improved to 9.98 million. That’s up by 21,400 jobs, or 0.2%, from December.

Overall, though, the state lost 20,600 jobs compared to January 2025, which is down by 0.2%.

Eleven of the 25 metropolitan areas in the state had year-over-year job gains, with the Orlando area seeing the best results with 6,800 added to the market. But 13 of those metro areas took a hit in the annual comparison, with the Fort Lauderdale area enduring the biggest downturn at a loss of 9,900 jobs.

Miami-Dade County had Florida’s lowest unemployment rate at 2.6% in January. The largely rural Taylor County in the Big Bend area had the highest jobless figure, at 10.3%.

FloridaCommerce officials say they anticipate releasing the February unemployment data later this month.