Tampa Employment Reaches Record High

After considerable delay due to the government shutdown jobs report was released today showing 148,000 jobs created nationally in September and falling short of analyst estimates of 180,000. In addition a substantial amount of the increase was due to seasonal government hiring including school teachers and staff.

Tampa Reaches New High in August 2013

While the Tampa numbers for September have yet to be released the numbers for August numbers have just been made available: Employment reached a new high at 1,264,590. The previous high of 1,262,967 was reached in July 2007. In addition the unemployment rate dropped to 7.0% from the 7.3% recorded in July. Tampa unemployment follows a seasonal trend with August marking the beginning of the winter cycle. From July 2012 to April 2013 the unemployment rate fell from 9.3% to 6.7% before rebounding back to the 7.3% in the summer

Graph of uneployment showing consistent mid-year seasonal spike.

The September numbers are still to come and should be unaffected by the shutdown. Thereafter it is unclear how the numbers will be affected moving forward. We do note however that government employment has been trending down in Tampa generally and that the recent gains are entirely due to the private-sector. 

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics