TALLAHASSEE  —  For the first time in more than a year and a half, fewer than a million Floridians were unemployed as the state’s jobless rate dropped for the fourth straight month to 10.8 percent in April, state officials said Friday.

That’s a 0.3 percentage point decline from March.

The April unemployment rate is Florida’s lowest in 19 months but still 1.8 percentage points higher than the national rate of 9 percent. It also means 996,000 Floridians were out of work. The last time that number was below a million was October 2009.

Florida’s April rate is more than a full percentage point below December’s 12 percent figure.