Top Employers — St. Petersburg, Florida

St. Petersburg, the most populous city in Pinellas County with a population of 260,646 as of the U.S. Census Bureau ACS 2023, functions as a regional employment center anchored by financial services and health care. The city's labor market, as documented in the Mayor's 2024 State of the Economy presentation, reported an unemployment rate lower than regional, state, and national rates by nearly a full percentage point at the time of the presentation — against an ACS 2023 citywide unemployment figure of 4.9%. The labor force participation rate stood at 72.8% in the same period.

DataUSA, drawing on U.S. Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics employment data, records Health Care and Social Assistance as the city's single largest employment sector, followed by Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services, and Retail Trade. These three sectors together represent a substantial share of St. Petersburg's employed workforce. The city's two most prominent individual employers — Raymond James Financial and Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital — operate within the financial services and health care sectors respectively, as identified in the Mayor's 2024 State of the Economy presentation.

Raymond James Financial was identified as the largest employer in St. Petersburg in the Mayor's 2024 State of the Economy presentation. The firm, headquartered in St. Petersburg, is one of the largest diversified financial services companies in the United States, with operations spanning investment banking, wealth management, and capital markets. Its St. Petersburg campus represents a significant concentration of financial sector employment in the downtown and midtown corridor.

Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital was ranked as the second-largest employer in the city in the same 2024 presentation. The hospital is an academic medical center affiliated with Johns Hopkins Medicine and provides pediatric specialty and subspecialty care, drawing patients and clinical staff from across the Tampa Bay region. Its presence on the St. Petersburg waterfront makes it a central institution in both the city's health care economy and its identity as a regional medical hub.

The Tampa Bay Rays Major League Baseball franchise, which has played at Tropicana Field in the Historic Gas Plant District since 1998 as documented by the City of St. Petersburg, represents a distinct category of employer — sports and entertainment — with payroll and operational employment tied to the downtown urban core. The franchise was acquired in a $1.7 billion transaction by a group led by Jacksonville-based developer Patrick Zalupski, as reported by CoStar.

DataUSA, using U.S. Census Bureau and BLS-derived employment data, documents Health Care and Social Assistance as St. Petersburg's largest employment sector, accounting for 20,521 workers. Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services ranks second with 16,062 workers, reflecting the city's concentration of financial services firms, law practices, engineering consultancies, and technology-adjacent employers. Retail Trade is third at 15,786 workers, distributed across commercial corridors throughout the city.

The health care sector's scale is consistent with the presence of Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital and the broader network of outpatient, specialty, and long-term care providers serving Pinellas County's population — which skews older, with St. Petersburg's median age recorded at 43.1 by the ACS 2023. The Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services sector's workforce of more than 16,000 reflects in part the employment generated by Raymond James Financial and associated financial advisory, legal, and compliance functions concentrated in the city.

St. Petersburg's employer base is situated within the broader Tampa Bay labor market, which encompasses Pinellas, Hillsborough, Pasco, and Hernando counties. The Tampa Bay Economic Development Council identifies MacDill Air Force Base — located across Tampa Bay in Tampa — as one of the metro area's largest employers, with more than 30,000 workers across the broader region. Although MacDill is outside St. Petersburg's city limits, its defense and contracting workforce draws from across Pinellas County and represents a structural feature of the area's employment geography.

Pinellas County Economic Development designates manufacturing, aviation and aerospace, defense, and technology as priority growth sectors for the county, situating St. Petersburg's professional services and health care concentration within a county-wide strategy that also emphasizes advanced manufacturing and defense contracting. The county's economic development apparatus works in coordination with CareerSource Tampa Bay to deliver employer-linked workforce training grants, connecting the county's target industries with both incumbent workers and new entrants to the labor market.

St. Petersburg's median household income of $73,118 (ACS 2023) and a poverty rate of 11.7% provide context for the city's internal labor market: while the professional and financial services sectors generate higher-wage employment, a substantial portion of the workforce is employed in retail, food service, and care economy roles at lower wage scales.

Pinellas County Economic Development documents a STEM and engineering talent pipeline embedded in Pinellas County Schools, with K–12 programs designed to prepare students for employment in the county's priority industry pathways — including aviation, aerospace, defense, and technology. This pipeline is positioned as a regional asset for employers recruiting locally rather than relying exclusively on in-migration of skilled workers.

CareerSource Tampa Bay, the regional workforce development board, administers employer-linked worker training grants that support both incumbent worker upskilling and new hire training for businesses in Pinellas County's target sectors, as documented by Pinellas County Economic Development. These grants function as a cost-sharing mechanism between the public workforce system and private employers, particularly for manufacturing, technical, and healthcare-adjacent roles that require credentialed training.

The city's educational attainment profile — with 26.1% of adults holding a bachelor's degree or higher as of ACS 2023 — reflects a workforce that spans both the credential-intensive professional services sector and the broader service economy. The presence of Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital and the health care sector's 20,521 workers also suggests sustained demand for credentialed clinical, administrative, and allied health occupations that intersect with both community college and university training programs in the region.

The most consequential employer-adjacent civic event in St. Petersburg over the 2024–2026 period involves the Tampa Bay Rays and the 86-acre Historic Gas Plant District. In October 2024, Hurricane Milton tore through the fiberglass roof of Tropicana Field, prompting the City of St. Petersburg to fund approximately $55–60 million in structural repairs, as reported by WUSF Public Media and AccuWeather. The Rays returned to a restored Tropicana Field on April 6, 2026.

In January 2025, the St. Pete City Council unanimously voted to terminate a $6.5 billion redevelopment agreement with the Tampa Bay Rays and developer Hines for the Historic Gas Plant District, as reported by St. Pete Rising. The terminated agreement had proposed a $1.3 billion baseball stadium and nearly 8 million square feet of mixed-use development — a scale of construction that would have represented a significant source of construction employment and long-term commercial activity in the urban core. Following the termination, Mayor Ken Welch extended the deadline for new redevelopment proposals, with multiple parties expressing interest in the 86-acre site, according to WUSF Public Media. The future development of this site remains an active and unresolved civic priority with direct implications for downtown employment density and land use.