Less than two weeks after announcing January figures that placed Flagler County’s unemployment rate at its highest level in five years, Florida’s Commerce Department on Friday issued February data that fractionally improved the county’s jobless rate to 5.8 percent, from 6 percent in January.
Florida’s unemployment rate increased to 4.6 percent, the highest rate since July 2021. The number of unemployed persons in the state rose 17,000, to 516,000, even as Florida showed a net increase of 1,800 jobs over the month.
The number of unemployed Flagler County residents fell by about 100 to 3,277, still the highest figure since the Covid layoffs. The labor force increased by a healthy 500 workers, an indication that the county is still adding residents, and especially residents of working age and with families. The majority of new residents between 2020 and 2025, when the county added 25,000 residents, were older and out of the workforce. The county’s labor force of 56,517 is a few dozen short of the record set last September.
Palm Coast’s figures tend to mirror the county’s, or vice versa, since Palm Coast accounts for 80 percent of the workforce. The city’s unemployment rate was 5.7 percent. The figures don;t distinguish between full-time and part-time workers: a worker need only register an hour’s paid work in the period surveyed to count as employed.
The numbers do not reflect underemployment or discouraged workers who have dropped out of the workforce or whose benefits have run out, but are still able to work. The state counts a person as unemployed only if that person is collecting unemployment, which runs out after 12 weeks–the stingiest allowance in the country. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ alternative measure of unemployment, which includes discouraged workers and those working part-time for economic reasons (because their hours have been cut back or they could not find full-time work), Florida’s rate is 7.9 percent. The nation’s is 8 percent.
Flagler County is in 45th place out of 67 counties for wage earners: the average weekly wage in Flagler County in the third quarter of 2025 was $969, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, compared to $1,051 in Volusia County, $1,139 in St. Johns, and $1,016 in Putnam. The Florida average was $1,342, the national average, $1,459.
In February, 199 single family home sales closed in Flagler County, with over 40 percent of those sales for cash, according to the Flagler County Association of Realtors. In the previous 12 months, sales closed for 2,847 single-family houses, an average of 237 per month. The median sale price in February was $365,000, down from $370,000 a year ago, not much changed since 2022, though adjusting for inflation, the cost has fallen more. The median time to a contract is two months, a little over three months for a sale. The county’s inventory of single-family houses had peaked at 1,500 last July, but has since fallen to just under 1,200, or about five months’ supply.
The data releases for the first two months of the year’s data in quick succession are an annual circumstance as the department benchmarks the previous year’s data. March figures will be released on May 1, and April figures on May 22 before monthly releases return to the ordinary schedule every third Friday of the month.
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