Unemployment in Tennessee fell to its lowest level in nine years last month as employers across the Volunteer State added 83,800 jobs over the past year.
Tennessee's jobless rate fell by .2 percent in April to 4.3 percent - the lowest level since May 2007 before the Great Recession. The Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development said Thursday that non-farm employment grew by 2.8 percent over the past year, or nearly 50 percent faster than the national average growth pace.
"In the past few quarters, Tennessee has really surged ahead and is now one of the strongest growth states in the nation," said Matt Murray, associate director at the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. "We're seeing broad-based growth across nearly all sectors."
Tennessee's jobless rate was well below the 5 percent nationwide rate and the 5.5 percent rate in neighboring Georgia last month.
But while unemployment in the Peach State remained above the U.S. average, Georgia employers continued to add jobs at a faster pace. Georgia employment in the past year grew by a robust 3.3 percent, adding 140,800 jobs over the past year. But the workforce also grew in Georgia, keeping the unemployment rate elevated above most of the nation.
Georgia's labor force has grown by 68,319 since the beginning of this year.
"We continue to see evidence that our job market is moving in the right direction, even though the unemployment rate remained steady," Georgia Labor Commissioner Mark Butler said. "Our job growth is outpacing the nation as a whole, our labor force is showing strong growth and our employers are laying off fewer workers."
The number of initial claims for unemployment insurance, a measure of new layoffs, declined last month in Georgia by 1,637, or 5.9 percent, to 26,345 in April.
The drop in joblessness has could soon begin to push up wages as employers compete more for workers to fill job vacancies, Murray said.
"We haven't seen much wage inflation yet, but as unemployment continues to decline we're likely to see more competition for workers and that should tend to push up wage rates over time," he said.
Last month, the average factory wage in Tennessee was $17.76 an hour, up 31 cents an hour from the previous month.
But Tennessee' manufacturing wages, on average, were still 13 percent below the U.S. average rate of $20.41 an hour, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.