Florida's job growth rocked it to start 2018
Bottom Line: Florida's ADP Report was outstanding to start 2018. After adding the most jobs of the year in December (35,100), we didn't let our foot off of the gas to start the new year. According to the report we added 18,100 private sector jobs in January & here were a couple of highlights:
Natural Resources/Mining and Construction 4,800
Trade, Transportation and Utilities 4,800
There were a couple of small warts as seasonality appeared to show up as we lost jobs in two top performing industries from 2017:
Manufacturing -100
Professional and Business Services -200
Hopefully we see a resumption of growth this month in these categories after typical seasonal weakness to start the year. Otherwise it's all good.
How good in context? Nationally 234,000 private sector jobs were added. In Florida, we accounted for 7.7% of all jobs added and we have just 6.3% of the population. That means that Florida outperformed the national job growth by 22% last month. It wasn't the 222% out-performance of last month but in a month of strong job growth nationally that surprised on the upside - we continued to lead the way. This bodes well for the momentum we're carrying into 2018 as well. With national economic momentum and the impact of tax reform getting ready to kick in... There's a lot to feel good about close to home right now.