Despite a slowdown in the housing industry and growing layoffs in many of the nation’s biggest tech firms, Chattanooga ended 2022 with unemployment near its historic lows reached earlier in the year.
The Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development said Thursday that the non-seasonally-adjusted jobless rate in metropolitan Chattanooga declined by a 10th of a percent to 2.9%. The December unemployment rate in Chattanooga at the end of the year was below the non-seasonally adjusted U.S. jobless rate of 3.9% and was just a tenth of a percent above the all-time low reached for unemployment this past spring in Chattanooga at 2.8%.
Chattanooga’s jobless rate was also below the statewide average of 3.5% during December.
“There’s been a slower rate of growth across all states, but Tennessee remains a very bright spot among all states,” Don Bruce, director of the Boyd Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, said in a telephone interview.
Tennessee’s career centers Thursday were advertising 357,984 open jobs across the state, or nearly four jobs for each of the 96,624 Tennesseans counted as unemployed but still looking for a job last month.