From December 2024 to March 2025, private-sector businesses in Florida added 510,563 jobs through openings and expansions, while job losses from closures and contractions totaled 480,933, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The difference resulted in a net gain of 29,630 private-sector jobs for the first quarter of 2025. In the previous quarter, job losses had surpassed gains by 19,111.
The BLS’s Business Employment Dynamics (BED) statistics measure these changes by tracking employment at private businesses from one quarter to the next. Gross job gains are counted from both new business openings and expansions at existing firms. For the first quarter of 2025 in Florida, expanding establishments contributed 379,055 new jobs—an increase of over ten thousand compared to the prior period—while opening establishments accounted for another 131,508 jobs, which was about twenty-six thousand fewer than in the previous quarter.
Gross job losses stem from contractions at ongoing businesses as well as closures. Contracting establishments in Florida lost 358,089 jobs during this period—a decrease of over thirty thousand from the previous quarter—while closing businesses shed an additional 122,844 jobs.
In terms of industry sectors within Florida, gross job gains outpaced losses in eight out of eleven sectors during the first quarter of 2025. Education and health services saw the largest net increase with a gain of 13,539 jobs; retail trade followed with a net gain of 8,509; and professional and business services posted a net increase of nearly seven thousand jobs. Transportation and warehousing experienced the highest net loss among sectors with a reduction of more than seventy-five hundred jobs; leisure and hospitality lost over four thousand positions.
Nationally, gross job gains represented about 5.6 percent of private-sector employment during this period compared to Florida’s rate of approximately 5.8 percent. Gross job losses were about equal between state and national figures at roughly five and a half percent.
BED data are part of a federal-state cooperative program called Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) and are compiled by BLS using QCEW records. Data on gross job gains and losses are available by industry subsector for all states as well as territories such as Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
Victoria G. Lee, Regional Commissioner for BLS, stated: “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.”
Further information is available on the Business Employment Dynamics homepage or through related summaries online.
The next BED release covering data for April through June 2025 is scheduled for February 26, 2026.
