Orlando Economy Guide: Jobs, Pay, Employers and Tourism

Orange County, home to Orlando, held 961,014 jobs in March 2026 across 56,445 business establishments, and those jobs paid an average of $1,432 a week (BLS QCEW, first quarter 2026).

The full year 2025 count for Orange County is steadier and easier to compare: 954,330 jobs in 55,130 establishments, an average annual pay of $70,599, and a net gain of 4,412 jobs, or 0.5 percent, from 2024 (BLS QCEW, 2025 annual averages). Private employers accounted for 870,276 of those jobs at an average of $70,495; federal agencies employed 13,649 people at an average of $106,200, state government 20,233 and local government 50,172 (BLS QCEW, 2025).

At metro scale, the Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford area counted a preliminary 1,508.3 thousand nonfarm jobs in August 2026, 0.8 percent more than a year earlier (BLS Economy at a Glance). The city government's own annual report puts the City of Orlando at 340,681 residents and the metro at 2,961,947 in fiscal 2025, using state population estimates (City of Orlando FY 2025 ACFR).

The county and metro numbers measure different places: the quarterly census file is for Orange County alone, while the Economy at a Glance series is for the whole Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford metro, so the metro job count runs well above the county one. A fair comparison keeps each figure with its own geography.

Leisure and hospitality employs the most people in Orange County, 230,657 private jobs in 2025, but it pays the least of the large sectors, an average of $45,438 a year (BLS QCEW, 2025 annual).

Professional and business services, the second largest Orange County sector at 170,190 jobs, paid an average of $90,955, roughly double the hospitality figure, yet it lost 8,164 jobs, or 4.6 percent, during 2025. Education and health services grew fastest among the big sectors, adding 6,564 jobs, or 5.8 percent, to reach 120,548 (BLS QCEW, 2025 annual). The best paid private sector in the county was information, at $117,819 on 15,125 jobs.

Source for every row: BLS QCEW 2025 annual file for Orange County. The Orlando industries hub breaks these sectors down further, from simulation and aerospace to conventions.

The Orlando metro is still adding jobs in 2026, but slowly: total nonfarm employment was up 0.8 percent in the year to August, and the unemployment rate drifted from 4.4 percent in March to a preliminary 4.6 percent in August (BLS Economy at a Glance).

The split by sector explains the Orlando slowdown. Leisure and hospitality was still 2.8 percent above a year earlier in August, at 301.3 thousand jobs, and professional and business services was up 2.6 percent at 281.4 thousand. Trade, transportation and utilities fell 1.7 percent to 264.5 thousand, financial activities fell 2.7 percent, and construction was 1.2 percent lower at 91.9 thousand (BLS Economy at a Glance). These monthly figures are not seasonally adjusted, which shows in government: it dipped to 127.1 thousand jobs in June and was back at 136.7 thousand in August.

The longer view comes from the city's annual report, which records the metro unemployment rate each September: 4.4 percent in 2016, 9.8 percent in 2020, 2.7 percent in 2022, 3.4 percent in 2024 and 4.1 percent in 2025 (City of Orlando FY 2025 ACFR, Demographic and Economic Statistics). The same report notes that the 2025 rate stayed below the national rate of 4.3 percent.

One wrinkle worth knowing: the Census Bureau's survey average for Orlando city residents, 5.2 percent for 2020 to 2024, runs higher than the BLS metro rates, because it is a five-year average of a household survey for the city alone, not a monthly metro count (Census ACS 2020-2024 DP03).

The median Orlando city household earned $72,336 a year in the Census Bureau's 2020 to 2024 American Community Survey, with a margin of error of $2,211, and per capita income was $43,312 (Census ACS 2020-2024 5-year, DP03, Orlando city).

A second official income series reads much higher. The city's annual report lists per capita personal income of $62,855 in 2024, a Bureau of Economic Analysis figure that covers Orange County from 2024 because the bureau no longer reports metropolitan areas; the metro figure was $40,169 in 2016 (City of Orlando FY 2025 ACFR). The two figures are not a conflict to resolve but different measures for different places: the BEA figure is for the whole county, and the ACS figure is a five-year survey estimate for city residents only.

Pay data adds a third angle. The average Orange County job paid $70,599 in 2025 (BLS QCEW, 2025), but the average job in the largest sector, leisure and hospitality, paid $45,438, which is why household income in a tourism economy can trail the county's average wage. The ACS also puts labor force participation for city residents aged 16 and over at 72.6 percent (Census ACS DP03).

Walt Disney World Resort is the largest employer on the City of Orlando's 2025 list, with 75,000 employees or 4.87 percent of metro employment, followed by AdventHealth System at 37,672 and Universal Orlando Resort at 26,800 (City of Orlando FY 2025 ACFR, Principal Employers).

The rest of the 2025 top ten are Orlando Health (24,978), Lockheed Martin Corp. (14,000), the University of Central Florida (13,004), SeaWorld Parks and Entertainment (5,192), Darden Restaurants (5,127), Valencia College (4,970) and HCA Health Care (4,831) (ACFR Principal Employers). The Orlando major employers 2026 guide explains where those counts come from and notes that Orange County Public Schools, second on the 2016 schedule, is absent from the 2025 top ten.

The property tax roll tells a different story about who carries the city's base. Universal City Development Partners LTD is the largest taxpayer, with $2,871,661,516 of taxable value, 5.41 percent of the city total; City of Orlando/GOAA is second at $730,205,133, and developers such as Liberty AIPO LP and Camden USA Inc follow. Every taxpayer outside the top ten together holds 88.49 percent of taxable value, so the base is broad (ACFR Principal Property Tax Payers).

That base has more than doubled. City taxable value was $22,676,173,745 in fiscal 2016 and $53,100,776,352 in fiscal 2025, while the city's operating millage stayed at 6.6500 every year of the decade (ACFR Assessed Value of Taxable Property). The report credits rising property values, not a higher rate, for the growth in city property tax revenue; the Orlando budget guide covers city spending.

Leisure and hospitality, the tourism sector, is the largest employer group in Orange County, and the county reported record tourist development tax collections of $384,587,100 in fiscal 2024-25 (City of Orlando FY 2025 ACFR).

Visit Orlando, the area's tourism bureau, estimates 76,663,200 visitors in 2025, of whom 6,337,600 came from abroad (Visit Orlando, Data and Trends). Its own year end hotel figures for 2025 list 132,685 rooms, average occupancy of 71.4 percent and an average daily rate of $202.71 (Visit Orlando, Orlando in Numbers). These are the bureau's own estimates, not government counts.

The city's annual report adds a caution from the airport: international passengers through Orlando International Airport rose 9.2 percent in fiscal 2025, but overall passenger traffic fell 2.7 percent in 2025 while freight traffic grew 4.2 percent (City of Orlando FY 2025 ACFR, letter of transmittal). The job counts match the picture of a large but low paid visitor sector: 230,657 leisure and hospitality jobs in Orange County in 2025 at an average of $45,438 (BLS QCEW 2025).

The City of Orlando Business Development Division, on the 6th floor of City Hall at 400 South Orange Avenue (407.246.2821), is the city office that works on recruiting, retaining and expanding businesses and on neighborhood commercial districts (City of Orlando Business Development Division).

The division lists business incentive programs, historic preservation incentives, grant and fee waiver resources, the Small Business Enterprise program for city contracting, vendor registration, Orlando Main Streets, Opportunity Zones and the Downtown Orlando Community Redevelopment Area. Its most recent posted Orlando Market Report covers 2023-2024, so newer numbers come from the BLS and city sources above (Business Development Division).

Within this economy section, the Orlando major employers 2026 guide answers who the largest employers are and how the official top ten has shifted since 2016. Related questions sit in other sections: the Orlando industries hub covers sector by sector detail, the Orlando housing market trends guide covers home prices and rents, and the Orlando budget guide covers how the city spends the tax base described here.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, by re-reading the BLS metro and Orange County QCEW files, the city's fiscal 2025 financial report schedules, the 2020 to 2024 Census income table, the Business Development Division page and Visit Orlando's data page.