Unemployment in metropolitan Chattanooga rose last month by a half percent to 7.9 percent.
The Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development said today that 20,570 workers in the 6-county Chttanooga metro area were out of work during May.
Chattanooga’s jobless rate last month matched metro Cleveland, Tenn., and was 2.8 percent below Dalton’s 10.7 percent jobless rate for the month.
The comparable nationwide rate in May was 7.6 percent
Among Tennessee’s major metro areas, unemployment was higher last moth in only one other metro area – Memphis, where the May jobless rate rose to 9.5 percent.