Logistics and Trade Industry in Miami

The Miami-Miami Beach-Kendall division had 324,900 Trade, Transportation, and Utilities jobs in August 2026, a preliminary Bureau of Labor Statistics count that is 0.1 percent above August 2025.

The BLS group combines trade with transportation and utilities, so it is broader than logistics alone, and it held roughly level with 2025 through the spring and summer of 2026 in the division (BLS, Miami-Miami Beach-Kendall Economy at a Glance). Total nonfarm employment in the division was 1,349,400 in August 2026, also preliminary.

The two gateways publish their own, much wider job counts. PortMiami's home page says the port supports 340,078 jobs and contributes $61 billion a year (PortMiami), and MIA's About page says MIA and related aviation industries contribute nearly 946,000 direct, indirect, induced and related jobs (Miami International Airport). Those are economic impact estimates that include indirect and induced jobs, so they cannot be added to or compared with the BLS payroll count for the division. PortMiami's own About blurb on the same site describes its job figure as more than 340,000 jobs across Florida, not Miami-Dade alone (PortMiami).

PortMiami handled 1,115,058 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of containers in 2025, up from 1,089,443 in 2024, according to the cargo table on the port's Miami-Dade County website.

PortMiami's 2025 tonnage split was 6,396,994 tons inbound against 3,466,009 tons outbound, so the port receives nearly twice the weight it ships out (PortMiami cargo statistics). The 2021 total of 1,254,062 TEUs is the high point of the table, and the 2025 figure is still below it.

PortMiami names three terminal operators: Port of Miami Terminal Operating Company, Seaboard Marine and South Florida Container Terminal, which work alongside trucking companies, the International Longshoremen Association and the warehousing community (PortMiami).

PortMiami's own pages disagree with each other as of October 15, 2026. The About page, and the cargo page's own shipping lines blurb, still say the port handled more than 1,120,913 TEUs in the last fiscal year (About PortMiami), but that number is the 2019 figure in the port's cargo table, and the home page gives $61 billion in annual economic impact while its business section gives $42 billion (PortMiami). The cargo table is the figure to quote for a given year.

Miami International Airport handled 3,405,322 U.S. tons of freight in 2025, 2,889,025 tons of it international, and its final 2025 rankings place it 1st among U.S. airports for international and total freight.

MIA's About page says MIA offers more flights to Latin America and the Caribbean than any other U.S. airport and lists 92 carriers as of August 2026 (Miami International Airport). Domestic freight was 516,298 U.S. tons in 2025, so international cargo made up about 85 percent of the total.

The two county sources do not agree on passengers: the PortMiami cargo page describes MIA as No. 3 in international passenger traffic, while MIA's final 2025 rankings put it 2nd (PortMiami; Miami International Airport). Both agree on No. 1 in international cargo.

MIA was founded in 1928, sits on 3,230 acres near downtown Miami, and is operated by the Miami-Dade Aviation Department as property of Miami-Dade County government (Miami International Airport). Its longest runway, 9-27, is 13,016 feet. MIA says it is funded through airline fees, concessions, parking and revenue bonds and receives no direct funding from local taxpayer dollars.

MIA lists 164 nonstop destinations as of September 2026, 97 of them international and 67 domestic, and its carriers include 17 charter operators; its list of new airlines for 2025 and 2026 includes 7Air Cargo to Managua, Santo Domingo and San Juan, SF Airlines as a cargo charter to China and Air China Cargo to Shanghai (Miami International Airport). MIA's page lists four other Miami-Dade airports, Miami-Opa-locka Executive Airport, Miami Executive Airport, Miami Homestead General Aviation Airport and the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, and puts the annual economic impact of MIA and those county general aviation airports at $212 billion.

Containers leave PortMiami by truck through the Port of Miami Tunnel to the Interstate highway system or by Florida East Coast Railway on-dock rail, which the port says reaches 70 percent of the U.S. population within four days.

PortMiami says the tunnel is used by more than 23 million vehicles and takes about 80 percent of port traffic off Downtown Miami streets (PortMiami). For downtown Miami, that means most port traffic no longer uses downtown streets to reach the highways.

The Florida East Coast Railway describes itself as a Class II regional railroad that owns all of the 351-mile mainline track from Jacksonville down to Miami and as the exclusive rail provider for PortMiami, Port Everglades and Port of Palm Beach (Florida East Coast Railway). It connects to the national railway system in Jacksonville, which it says lets it provide rail service in and out of Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina and North Carolina (Florida East Coast Railway).

The port also points to its cooperation with and close proximity to MIA as part of its connectivity (PortMiami).

A Miami company uses Foreign-Trade Zone No. 281 by applying to PortMiami, winning approval from the Foreign Trade Zone Board and then activating its site with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which lets it defer, reduce or avoid customs duties.

PortMiami explains that FTZs are secure areas under CBP supervision that are considered outside CBP territory once activated, so goods in the zone are not subject to U.S. duties or excise taxes, which are due only on entry for U.S. consumption (PortMiami, Foreign Trade Zone 281). Goods can be re-exported duty-free, stored for an unlimited period, and manufactured, cleaned, destroyed, sorted or assembled inside the zone.

The fees are published on the port site: PortMiami lists a $2,500 application fee for FTZ 281, then an annual fee of $2,500 for a non-active site or $6,500 for an active site (PortMiami).

The PortMiami FTZ page lays out three phases: Phase 1 is the application with PortMiami, Phase 2 is approval from the Foreign Trade Zone Board and an FTZ Site Operator Agreement, and Phase 3 is activation from Customs and Border Protection with grantee approval (PortMiami). An operator at an existing Magnet Site does not need Foreign Trade Zone Board approval and completes Phases I and III only, while a Usage-Driven Site or Subzone needs all three phases.

The Miami-Dade Beacon Council says about one-third of all U.S. exports to Latin America and the Caribbean move through Miami, and that total trade through the Miami Customs District reached $137 billion in 2023.

The Beacon Council says that 2023 total was more than two-thirds of Florida's two-way trade, names aircraft parts, computers and telecommunications equipment as major exports and electronics, precious metals and seafood as leading imports, and counts 277 million square feet of warehousing capacity in the Miami area (Miami-Dade Beacon Council). Its 2023 trade figure is the newest dated year on the page, so it is three years old as of October 2026, and the page's undated headline banner gives a different figure of $140B+ in annual international trade (Miami-Dade Beacon Council).

Last verified: October 15, 2026, on the Miami-Dade County PortMiami, Miami International Airport, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Florida East Coast Railway and Miami-Dade Beacon Council websites.