Chattanooga-area employers added 9,230 jobs in the six-county metro area over the past 12 months, boosting employment by 3.7 percent, or twice the national rate of growth.
The Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development said Thursday that the jobless rate last month in metro Chattanooga jumped from 3.3 percent in May to 4.4 percent last month. But the increase was due to seasonal factors. Compared with a year ago, Chattanooga's unemployment rate still dropped from 5.1 percent in June 2016 to 4.4 percent last month.
"Chattanooga and Cleveland still remain very strong areas for employment growth, behind only metro Nashville," University of Tennessee economist Bill Fox said. "We continue to see positive signs in our economy and that should continue to keep unemployment relatively low."
Amazon is planning a job fair Wednesday to hire hundreds more warehouse workers in Tennessee and Textile Corporation of America announced earlier this week it would soon begin hiring for a new 1,000-job textile mill planned to be built in a former auto supplier plant in Pikeville, Tenn.
Last month, however, a drop in education jobs during the summer break and the entrance of high school and college graduates into the workforce combined to push up the non-seasonally-adjusted jobless rate last month across the Chattanooga region.
But the non-seasonally adjusted unemployment rates in Southeast Tennessee and Northwest Georgia were still down during June from a year earlier.
The unemployment rate increased in each of Tennessee's 95 counties in June 2017, according to data released by the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development.
"These figures most likely raised a few eyebrows when people first saw them because May was such a stellar month in Tennessee," Tennessee Labor Commissioner Burns Phillips said. "We've seen this type of increase in the June county unemployment rates since the state started keeping records in 1976."
Between May and June, education service jobs were down by 35,100. These are custodians, bus drivers and other school support staff who are not working during the summer months.
June is also typically the month when recent high school and college graduates enter the workforce and have yet to find employment, adding to the jobless count across the state.
Across the Chattanooga region, the jobless rate also rose last month by 1.5 percentage points in metro Cleveland to 4.4 percent and increased in metro Dalton by three-tenths of a percentage point to 5.5 percent.
During June, unemployment in the region was lowest in Hamilton and Coffee counties at 4.1 percent and highest among all of Tennessee's 95 counties in Rhea County at 7.3 percent.
Jobless in June
Despite a monthly increase in unemployment across all counties during June, the jobless rate last month was down from a year ago:Tennessee* Hamilton, 4.1 percent, down 1.0 percent from a year ago* Coffee, 4.1 percent, down 1.1 percent from a year ago * Franklin, 4,3 percent, down 1.3 percent from a year ago* Bradley, 4.3 percent, down 1.0 percent from a year ago* McMinn, 4.8 percent, down 1.0 percent from a year ago* Polk, 5.0 percent, down 1.2 percent from a year ago* Sequatchie, 5.3 percent, down 0.9 percent from a year ago* Van Buren, 5.3 percent, down 1.4 percent from a year ago* Marion, 5.4 percent, down 1.2 percent from a year ago* Meigs, 5.6 percent, down 2.1 percent from a year ago* Grundy, 6.0 percent, down 1.2 percent from a year ago* Bledsoe, 6.7 percent, down 1.0 percent from a year ago* Rhea, 7.3 percent, down 0.7 percent from a year agoGeorgia* Catoosa, 4.6 percent, down 0.4 percent from a year ago* Chattooga, 5.1 percent, down 1.0 percent from a year ago* Dade, 4.9 percent, down 0.3 percent from a year ago* Walker, 5.0 percent, down 0.4 percent from a year ago* Whitfield, 5.3 percent, down 0.7 percent from a year ago* Murray, 5.8 percent, down 1.2 percent from a year agoSources: Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development, Georgia Department of Labor