Tennessee job growth maintains tight labor market; Georgia jobless rate falls to near 2-decade low

Tennessee employers continued to add jobs at a faster pace than the U.S. average over the past 12 months, creating nearly two open jobs for every Tennessean still out of work.

The Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development said Thursday the state’s jobless rate edged higher in June due to more workers coming into the labor market than the 9,600 additional jobs added across the state in June. But even with the uptick in the jobless rate from the historic low reached this spring, Tennessee’s unemployment rate last month of 3.4% was well below the U.S. jobless rate of 3.7%.

“I don’t think this monthly increase in the unemployment rate means anything in terms of the underlying economic performance and direction of Tennessee’s economy,” said Dr. Bill Fox, director of the Boyd Center for Business and Economic Research. “We still have an unemployment rate that is near historically low levels and in this environment anyone who has the skills and wants to work can find a job. With unemployment so low, it is harder to sustain the kind of growth in employment or decline in the jobless rate we saw in previous years but that simply reflects how strong the economy is right now.”

Over the past 12 months, non-farm employment grew by 52,100 jobs and employment in the state grew at a robust 3.1% pace, more than triple the U.S. growth rate in employment of 0.9% in the same period, according to household surveys by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Tennessee career centers on Thursday listed 192,494 available jobs, which is over 70% more than the 112,200 persons who were counted as unemployed and still looking for work in June across Tennessee.