Occupations — Palm Bay, Florida

Office and administrative support is the largest single occupation group among Palm Bay residents, with 7,955 of the 58,913 employed civilians aged 16 and over, followed by sales with 5,790 and management with 5,402 (ACS 2020-2024, table S2401).

The Palm Bay S2401 table breaks employed residents into 35 occupation categories, from five broad groups down to 25 detailed ones (ACS S2401, Palm Bay city), counted by where workers live, not where they work. Office and administrative support takes 13.5 percent of employed Palm Bay residents (7,955 divided by 58,913), sales 9.8 percent and management 9.2 percent. The column codes are defined in the S2401 variable list.

The county shares come from the Brevard County S2401 table, which counts 285,242 employed civilians; for example, 32,148 county residents work in office and administrative support, 11.3 percent (32,148 divided by 285,242). Palm Bay residents are more concentrated than the county in office support, construction, healthcare support and repair work, and less concentrated in management, business and finance, and engineering.

Each Palm Bay count carries a margin of error: 910 for office and administrative support, 794 for management and 504 for architecture and engineering (ACS S2401). Differences of a few hundred workers between neighboring rows in the table are within that range, so the order of the middle rows is approximate for Palm Bay.

About 4,778 Palm Bay residents work in computer, engineering and science occupations, 8.1 percent of employed residents, including 2,447 in architecture and engineering and 1,925 in computer and mathematical jobs (ACS 2020-2024).

That 8.1 percent (4,778 divided by 58,913) is below the Brevard County share of 10.3 percent and above the Florida share of 5.6 percent, computed from the Brevard County and Florida S2401 counts of 29,334 and 584,666. The Palm Bay figure for life, physical and social science occupations is 406 residents, with a margin of error of 143 (ACS S2401, Palm Bay).

The City of Palm Bay names engineering and defense as its top industries and lists L3Harris, Renesas Electronics and Raytheon Technologies among major employers (City of Palm Bay, Discover Palm Bay). The city page also notes that Florida Tech operates the Center for Advanced Manufacturing and Innovative Design (CAMID) in Palm Bay. The Census counts show where Palm Bay engineers live, not which employer they work for or whether the job sits inside city limits.

Jobs located across the Palm Bay metro area lean further toward engineering than the residents of Palm Bay do. In the Bureau of Labor Statistics May 2025 survey of employers, architecture and engineering occupations held 5.6 percent of jobs in the Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville metro area against 1.7 percent nationally, and computer and mathematical occupations 5.1 percent against 3.4 percent (BLS, Occupational Employment and Wages in Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville, May 2025). The metro area covers all of Brevard County.

The two Palm Bay measures are not the same survey. The ACS counts Palm Bay residents by their occupation wherever they work, including the self-employed, while the BLS employer survey counts wage and salary jobs by workplace across the metro area. The gap in food preparation, 4.8 percent of Palm Bay residents against 10.6 percent of metro jobs, is one of the larger differences, but neither source measures where Palm Bay residents commute to work.

Employed Palm Bay residents rose from 48,185 in ACS 2015-2019 to 58,913 in ACS 2020-2024, and nearly two thirds of the gain, 6,816 workers, came in management, business, science and arts occupations.

The earlier ACS S2401 2015-2019 table for Palm Bay counted 14,993 residents in management, business, science and arts work; the later table counts 21,809, a rise of 6,816 (21,809 minus 14,993) out of a total gain of 10,728 workers (58,913 minus 48,185). The share of employed Palm Bay residents in that broad group went from 31.1 percent to 37.0 percent.

Architecture and engineering nearly doubled among Palm Bay residents, from 1,259 to 2,447, and the two ranges (1,005 to 1,513, and 1,943 to 2,951) do not overlap, so the rise is not a sampling quirk. Management and educational instruction also grew by more than their margins of error. Food preparation and serving is the one large Palm Bay group that shrank clearly, falling by 1,265 workers, while the service total held roughly level.

The Palm Bay figures pool five years of survey responses each, so the comparison is between the 2015-2019 and 2020-2024 periods, not two single years. The ACS does not record why the Palm Bay mix shifted; a growing population of new residents and changes among existing workers both feed into the totals.

Palm Bay's employed residents split almost evenly by sex, 29,883 men and 29,030 women, but individual occupations are far from even: women hold 88.0 percent of healthcare support jobs and men 95.7 percent of construction and maintenance work (ACS 2020-2024).

The Palm Bay S2401 table gives the percent male and percent female for every occupation group (ACS S2401, Palm Bay city). Men are 50.7 percent of employed Palm Bay residents and women 49.3 percent. Women make up 82.2 percent of Palm Bay residents in educational instruction and library jobs, 79.8 percent in office and administrative support and 82.6 percent among healthcare practitioners and technical workers.

Women make up a larger share of Palm Bay healthcare practitioner and office workers than they do countywide. The Brevard County S2401 table puts women at 74.6 percent of healthcare practitioners and technical workers, against 82.6 percent in Palm Bay, and at 75.2 percent of office and administrative support, against 79.8 percent in Palm Bay. Women hold 64.9 percent of Palm Bay business and financial operations jobs and 41.3 percent of management jobs.

Men dominate the Palm Bay trades and technical fields. They hold 85.9 percent of computer and mathematical jobs, 83.4 percent of architecture and engineering jobs and 92.7 percent of transportation occupations among Palm Bay residents. In the small group of Palm Bay residents working as law enforcement officers and supervisors, 395 of 411 are men, though that group carries a margin of error of 174.

Most employed Palm Bay residents, 71.9 percent, work for private companies, 11.1 percent for local, state or federal government and 6.2 percent in their own unincorporated businesses or as unpaid family workers, with the mix varying sharply by occupation (ACS 2020-2024, table S2406).

The Palm Bay S2406 table crosses class of worker with the five broad occupation groups (ACS S2406, Palm Bay city); its columns are listed in the S2406 variable list. Government employment is concentrated in management, business, science and arts work, where 17.6 percent of Palm Bay residents work for a government; in table S2401 that broad group also contains the educational instruction and library occupations. Private not-for-profit employers take 9.6 percent of that group.

Self-employment is a trades story in Palm Bay. Among residents in natural resources, construction and maintenance work, 16.7 percent run unincorporated businesses and another 7.6 percent their own incorporated businesses, so roughly one in four Palm Bay tradespeople works for themselves (16.7 plus 7.6 is 24.3 percent). Production, transportation and material moving is the most private-company group in Palm Bay, at 83.1 percent.

The S2406 figures for Palm Bay describe the employer type of residents, not of jobs located in the city. A Palm Bay resident counted under government is not placed by the table at any particular agency or level of government beyond local, state and federal combined. Last verified: October 13, 2026, on the U.S. Census Bureau website.