On both sides of the bay, Hillsborough and Pinellas counties lose private jobs

Tampa Bay's private employers ended March 2026 with fewer workers than they had a year earlier. Florida and the nation kept adding jobs over the same stretch. Pasco County was the only county in the region to grow.

Taken together, Hillsborough, Pasco, Pinellas and Hernando had private payrolls 11,161 jobs lower in March 2026 than in March 2025, according to county payroll counts from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That is a drop of 0.9%. Statewide, private jobs rose 0.1%, and nationally they rose 0.2%.

Those statewide and national gains are small. They still leave the region on the wrong side of the line, losing ground while Florida as a whole inched up.

Finance and trade down, health and hospitality up

Financial activities took the biggest hit. The region had 7,320 fewer jobs in that industry than a year earlier. Trade, transportation and utilities was 5,546 jobs lower.

Some industries kept hiring. Education and health services added 4,827 jobs, ranking first among the region's industries for growth. Leisure and hospitality added 2,869. Those gains softened the losses but did not cover them.

Hillsborough carried most of the loss

Hillsborough County, the region's largest job center, had 8,653 fewer private jobs, a decline of 1.2%. No county in the region fell faster, and Hillsborough accounted for most of the region's net loss.

Financial activities in Hillsborough alone were 6,595 jobs lower than a year earlier. That is most of the region's finance decline.

On the Pinellas side of the bay, private employers had 3,702 fewer jobs, down 0.9%. That matched the regional rate. In Hernando County, at the northern edge of the region, the count was 246 lower, a 0.6% decline.

Pasco County was the exception. Its private employers added 1,440 jobs, and payrolls rose 1.1%. That rate beat both Florida and the U.S.

Signs of strain in earlier reports

In the state's year-end labor figures, the broader Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater metro was still adding jobs (tbbwmag.com). Unemployment was already climbing, though. The metro's jobless rate in December 2025 was higher than it had been a year earlier (tbbwmag.com).

Florida as a whole also added jobs over that year, even as total employment slipped from November to December (tbbwmag.com). Statewide, education and health services posted the largest over-the-year increase among major sectors (tbbwmag.com), the same industry that led Tampa Bay's gains in the March counts. Construction and manufacturing lost jobs statewide (tbbwmag.com).

Newer numbers show only a slight change. A Tampa Bay Economic Development Council report found the Tampa metro's total nonfarm payrolls showed a slight job loss from May 2025 to May 2026 (tampabayedc.com). That count includes government jobs, so it does not line up exactly with the private-sector figures here.

The same report found gains in education and health services, professional and business services and manufacturing (tampabayedc.com).

For job seekers, the pattern from the March counts is plain enough. Across the region, the hiring was in education and health services and in leisure and hospitality. The shrinking was concentrated in financial activities and in trade, transportation and utilities, and most of the net loss was in Hillsborough County.

About the data

We used the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages county counts of private-sector jobs for March 2025 and March 2026. We added Hillsborough, Pasco, Pinellas and Hernando together, compared the change across major industry groups and set each county's percent change against Florida and the U.S. The newer Tampa metro figures come from a Tampa Bay Economic Development Council report and state labor reports, which use a different survey and include government jobs.

• The March 2026 county counts are preliminary and may be revised as employers file corrected reports.
• Comparing a single month with the same month a year earlier can miss shifts that happened in between, and the counts don't say why employers added or cut jobs.
• The metro nonfarm figures cited from other reports include government jobs and come from a separate survey, so they are not directly comparable with these private-sector counts.

Financial activities: the industry group covering banks, insurance carriers, real estate and related firms. Trade, transportation and utilities: the industry group covering retail stores, wholesalers, trucking, warehousing, shipping and utility companies. Nonfarm payrolls: a monthly count of jobs that includes private and government employers but excludes farm work.

Sources

• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages: QCEW employment and wages by industry — Hillsborough County, FL, latest period 2026-Q1; retrieved Oct. 23, 2026. Data
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages: QCEW employment and wages by industry — Pinellas County, FL, latest period 2026-Q1; retrieved Oct. 23, 2026. Data
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages: QCEW employment and wages by industry — Pasco County, FL, latest period 2026-Q1; retrieved Oct. 23, 2026. Data
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages: QCEW employment and wages by industry — Hernando County, FL, latest period 2026-Q1; retrieved Oct. 23, 2026. Data
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages: QCEW employment and wages by industry — Florida, latest period 2026-Q1; retrieved Oct. 23, 2026. Data
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages: QCEW employment and wages by industry — U.S. total, latest period 2026-Q1; retrieved Oct. 23, 2026. Data