The largest employers in Jacksonville: hospitals, the Navy and the back offices

This page is for job seekers, relocating families, economic developers and B2B sellers who want to know who employs the most people around Jacksonville. It uses the list the region's economic development organization publishes, groups it by type of employer, and adds federal data to show what the list can't.

Jacksonville's 30 largest employers

JAXUSA Partnership, the economic development organization for Northeast Florida, publishes Northeast Florida Large Employers, last updated in February 2026. It covers seven counties (Baker, Clay, Duval, Flagler, Nassau, Putnam and St. Johns), includes government and the military, and gives estimated local employees. JAXUSA notes that the numbers are estimates drawn from multiple sources.

JAXUSA lists employers in order of size without numbering them; the ranks are ours, and ties share their order on JAXUSA's list. The full list runs to 21 pages; next come JEA (2,440), Fidelity Investments (2,360), VyStar Credit Union (2,320) and Deutsche Bank (2,000). The same list appears on our Florida largest employers page in short form; this page goes through the whole of it.

The four pillars

Retail and logistics (Publix, Amazon, Winn-Dixie, UPS, CSX, Fanatics, Crowley and Landstar) add another 35,550. Two patterns matter. First, most of the finance employers are operations centers for companies headquartered elsewhere: Bank of America, Citi, JPMorgan Chase and Deutsche Bank decide on technology and vendors in their head offices, not in Jacksonville. Second, Jacksonville's own big headquarters are modest local employers: FNF (1,500) and FIS (1,500) each employ fewer people in Northeast Florida than Brooks Rehabilitation (3,250). For companies ranked by revenue instead, see the biggest companies in Jacksonville.

What federal data adds

Government's share. The BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages counts jobs covered by unemployment insurance. Summing the metro's five counties for 2025:

Government is 10.4% of covered jobs. That understates the public sector here, because the QCEW counts civilian jobs only: the sailors at Naval Air Station Jacksonville and Naval Station Mayport aren't in it, though JAXUSA's base totals are. Average pay is the BLS figure for the total and our calculation (wages divided by jobs) for each type.

How rare a big workplace is. The Census Bureau's County Business Patterns counted 44,152 private business locations in the metro in 2023; 77 had 500 to 999 employees and 45 had 1,000 or more. Where the sector is published, those 45 include 12 in health care, 11 in finance and insurance, 7 in transportation and warehousing, 6 in information and 3 in construction. CBP counts locations, not employers, and excludes government.

How Jacksonville's largest employers buy

1. Health systems buy clinical supplies through group purchasing and value analysis committees, and buy staffing, facilities and IT through supply chain and HR. See selling to hospitals.
2. Military installations buy through federal contracting, with opportunities posted publicly and contractors registered in SAM.gov. See selling to government.
3. School districts and local government buy through formal bids and vendor registration with each district or the City.
4. Financial operations centers run local site budgets (facilities, training, temporary staff) but take technology and major vendor decisions at headquarters.

Illustrative example. The company, rates and results are fictional; the employer figures are from JAXUSA's list.

St. Johns Clinical Staffing (stjohnsclinical.example) supplies per-diem and contract nurses to hospitals.

• The five largest hospital employers on the list (Baptist, Mayo, Ascension St. Vincent's, UF Health Jacksonville and HCA Florida Memorial) employ 40,250 people.
• It assumes 30% are nurses, about 12,075, and that contract staff fill 5% of nursing hours: roughly 600 full-time equivalents.
• At a $25 hourly margin over 2,000 hours, each full-time equivalent is worth about $50,000 a year, so supplying 30 of them is worth $1.5 million.
• It contacts each system's nurse staffing office and the managers of units with posted vacancies, not the chief nursing officer first.

Finding the unit managers with open shifts across five systems is the slow part; Bebop can search for nursing managers at Jacksonville hospitals with open positions and draft outreach to each.

Subject: Per-diem RNs for [unit] at [hospital]

Hi [first name],

I saw [hospital] is hiring for [unit] again this month. When those positions stay open, the gap usually lands on overtime for the nurses you already have.

We place per-diem and 13-week RNs with Northeast Florida hospitals, all credentialed locally, often within two weeks. Could I send three available profiles for [unit]?

[Your name], St. Johns Clinical Staffing

Next step: see how big organizations split their buying in enterprise account research.