PDF: Jobless rates for April
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said the jobless rates in the three metro regions were all down from April 2009 to April 2010, placing each of the regions in the top 20 percent of all major U.S. cities for job growth during the past year.
The three metro areas were among only 73 metro areas nationwide where unemployment dropped in the past year and among only a handful of metro areas in the Mid-South to show lower unemployment than a year ago.
"We're certainly not back to the good old days, but employers are more interested in hiring again and we're definitely seeing more activity," said Mark Campbell, owner of the local Manpower franchise that places hundreds of area workers in a variety of factory and office jobs from its Chattanooga and Dalton offices. "There are still far more people looking for work than the number of employers hiring. But it's getting better."
The 9 percent jobless rate in metro Chattanooga during April was down 0.1 percent from the same month a year ago, reflecting the net addition of 2,300 jobs in Chattanooga over the past year, according to preliminary BLS estimates.
"There is a lot of economic momentum in our region, not only from large employers like Volkswagen and Alstom, but increasingly from many small employers also," Hamilton County Mayor Claude Ramsey said.
Despite the yearly gain, however, employment in metro Chattanooga during April was still down by 18,800 jobs from the peak of three years ago before the start of the Great Recession.
In metropolitan Dalton, unemployment fell in the past year from 12.1 percent in April 2009 to 11.5 percent in April 2010. Dalton was the only one of Georgia's 14 metro areas to show such a yearly decline, although the Carpet Capital still maintained the highest overall unemployment rate of any Georgia metro area during April.
In metropolitan Cleveland, Tenn., the jobless rate fell from 9.8 percent in April 2009 to 9.7 percent in April 2010.
By comparison, the jobless rate rose in the past year from 10 percent to 10.3 percent across Tennessee and unemployment increased during the past year from 8.6 percent to 9.8 percent across Georgia.
The U.S. Department of Labor is scheduled to release U.S. data for May unemployment at 8:30 a.m. today.
On Thursday, the University of Tennessee's Center for Business and Economic Research updated its economic forecast and concluded that the worst is behind for the economy of the Volunteer State.
"Things have turned the corner and we are seeing some job growth in Tennessee, at least in the past quarter," said Dr. Matt Murray, a University of Tennessee economist who prepared the new report. "But it will take a considerable period of time to erase the job losses over the course of the recession."
Nonfarm employment fell 0.8 percent in 2008 and plunged another 5.6 percent last year, including the loss of 88,000 manufacturing jobs in the state during the recent recession, the UT report said.
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