The Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater metro area topped all other metro areas in Florida in job creation in December 2011, based on data from the Florida Realtors organization. Over the 12-month period ended December 2011, employers in the Tampa area created jobs for 28,500 people, nearly seven percent more than the number of jobs the Miami area created and more than tripling the Orlando area’s job creation results.
Here are the job creation numbers of the 12 major metro areas in Florida in 2011:
| Metro Area | Jobs Created |
| Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater | 28,500 |
| Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Miami Beach | 26,700 |
| Jacksonville | 10,600 |
| Orlando | 8,900 |
| Deltona-Daytona Beach-Ormond Beach | 3,100 |
| Fort Myers-Cape Coral | 2,500 |
| Tallahassee | 2,100 |
| Sarasota-Bradenton-Venice | 2,000 |
| Ocala | 500 |
| Gainesville | -1,000 |
| Pensacola-Ferry Pass-Brent | -2,100 |
| Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville | -3,500 |
The Tampa area’s job strength is in the trade, transportation and utilities industry, accounting for 18.7% of total employment in the metro area; professional and business services, accounting for 17.4%; and education and health services, accounting for 15.7%.
The Port of Tampa has become the seventh largest port in the U.S., handling almost half of all seaborne commercial movements in the state. The Tampa area hosts four well-known airports: Tampa International Airport, Tampa Executive Airport, Peter O. Knight Airport, and St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport. The city also has more than 24 hospitals and trauma centers within its central area and suburbs, with three of them considered among the best hospitals in the country.
Most metro areas in Florida have their biggest employment numbers in the trade, transportation and utilities sector, with the exception of the Daytona Beach area, Sarasota area and Pensacola area, whose strongest is the education and health services sector; Gainesville and Tallahassee areas, whose strongest sector is the government. In Tallahassee, the capital of Florida and county seat of Leon County, government employees drown out all other employee types, with their share of 36.4 percent of total employment.
Most Florida metro areas also mirror the Tampa area in having the professional and business services and education and health services as two of their top three biggest employment sectors. The Daytona Beach and Cape Coral metro areas are the two areas that have the leisure and hospitality industry as one of their three biggest employment sectors.
Daytona Beach, home to the NASCAR and the Grand American Road Racing Association, is known for its hard-packed beach sand for racing and year-round family-friendly resorts. Deltona is the bedroom community of theme-park-filled Orlando while Cape Coral and Fort Myers have waterways that have access to the Gulf of Mexico.
Tampa is also a city known for its waterfront communities that have easy access to the Gulf of Mexico. Clearwater and St. Petersburg, the two cities that complete the tri-city Tampa metro area, are both on the peninsula between Tampa Bay and the Gulf of Mexico.