From December 2024 to March 2025, private-sector businesses in Florida saw gross job gains of 510,563 and gross job losses of 480,933, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Regional Commissioner Victoria G. Lee stated that “the difference between the number of gross job gains and the number of gross job losses yielded a net employment gain of 29,630 jobs in the private sector during the first quarter of 2025.” In the previous quarter, there was a net loss of 19,111 jobs.
The Business Employment Dynamics (BED) data track changes in employment at private-sector establishments from one quarter to the next. The net change is calculated by subtracting gross job losses from gross job gains.
In Florida for the first quarter of 2025, gross job gains accounted for 5.8 percent of private-sector employment, compared to a national rate of 5.6 percent. Expanding establishments in Florida added 379,055 jobs—an increase from the prior quarter—while opening establishments contributed 131,508 jobs, which was a decrease compared to the previous period.
Gross job losses represented 5.5 percent of private-sector employment in Florida; nationally, this figure was slightly lower at 5.4 percent. Contracting establishments lost 358,089 jobs—a decrease from the previous quarter—and closing establishments lost 122,844 jobs.
Eight out of eleven industry sectors in Florida experienced more job gains than losses during this period. Education and health services had the largest net increase with a gain of 13,539 jobs after accounting for both gains and losses within that sector. Retail trade followed with a net gain of 8,509 jobs and professional and business services added a net total of 6,965 jobs. Transportation and warehousing recorded the largest net loss among sectors with a reduction of 7,585 jobs; leisure and hospitality also reported a net loss.
The BED series provides detailed data on job flows by industry subsector across all states as well as information by employer size class. More details are available on the Business Employment Dynamics homepage and in summary reports online.
The BLS plans to release BED data for the second quarter of 2025 on February 26, 2026.
The BED data come from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW), part of a federal-state cooperative program managed by BLS using existing QCEW records.
For more details about definitions or methodology used in these statistics, refer to the Business Employment Dynamics Technical Note.
