Unemployment in the Chattanooga area edged higher in January due to the normal seasonal drop in retail and other holiday-related hirings, but the new year began with the lowest jobless rate in Chattanooga in more than two decades.
Despite higher interest rates from the Federal Reserve Board’s efforts to slow the economy, unemployment in the six-county Chattanooga metropolitan area averaged 3.4% during January, according to data released Thursday by the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development. January’s jobless rate in Chattanooga was up from the 2.9% rate in December but still a half percent lower than a year ago.
Chattanooga’s jobless rate was also below the state and national averages during January and was the lowest for the month since 2001, when the January rate was also at 3.4%.
Chattanooga’s metro unemployment rate in January was below the rate in Memphis but still slightly above what it was in both the Nashville and Knoxville markets.
“The labor market continues to be rather robust in Tennessee, and while the county rates vary some, I think we still remain quite strong,” Don Bruce, director of the Boyd Center for Economic Research at the University of Tennessee, said in a telephone interview Thursday after the new jobs numbers were released. “We haven’t seen the slowdown in the labor markets that many had expected with the Fed’s actions, and Tennessee continues to remain strong with the influx of businesses and people moving into the state.”