Several Florida metropolitan areas had the highest decrease in unemployment rates, not seasonally adjusted, across the U.S. in November 2011, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday.

The Bureau’s Metropolitan Area Employment and Unemployment Summary indicates that the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach metropolitan area reported the largest over-the-year unemployment rate decrease (-2.5 percentage points) among “forty-eight of the metropolitan areas with a Census 2000 population of 1 million” or more.

Among metropolitan divisions, “which are essentially separately identifiable employment centers,” Miami-Miami Beach-Kendall posted the largest unemployment rate decline from a year earlier (-3.2 percentage points), while West Palm Beach-Boca Raton-Boynton Beach was one of two U.S. metropolitan divisions that reported unemployment rate decreases of 2 percentage points or more.

The metropolitan report released Wednesday also indicates that across the nation unemployment rates were lower in November 2011 than November 2010 in 351 of the 372 metropolitan areas, higher in 16 and unchanged in five.

The report also shows that while 12 Florida metropolitan areas registered increased employment rates, eight metropolitan areas saw their employment rate drop from November 2010 through November 2011.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ state unemployment report (.pdf) released in mid-December indicated that Florida’s unemployment rate dropped from 11.9 percent in November 2010 to 10 percent in November 2011, still above the U.S. average, which sat at about 8.6 percent.

The December state unemployment report added that with with 98,100 seasonally adjusted new jobs, Florida ranked third through 2011 among 25 states that “experienced statistically significant changes in employment, all of which were increases.”