Chattanooga jobless rate edges lower and remains below state and U.S. average

File photo / A Kmart department store sign reads "Now Hiring." Despite the shutdown of six area plants so far in 2023, Chattanooga's jobless rate declined to 3.3% in September and remains below the state and national average unemployment rates. File photo / A Kmart department store sign reads "Now Hiring." Despite the shutdown of six area plants so far in 2023, Chattanooga's jobless rate declined to 3.3% in September and remains below the state and national average unemployment rates.

By Dave Flessner October 26, 2023 4 min read

Despite plant closings so far this year at a half dozen area businesses, unemployment in metropolitan Chattanooga declined again last month and remained below both the state and national averages for unemployment in September.

Chattanooga area employers boosted payrolls by a net 4,061 jobs over the past 12 months, including more than 800 new jobs added last month, to trim Chattanooga’s jobless rate to 3.3% in September, according to the monthly jobs report released Thursday by the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development. The non-seasonally adjusted jobless rate in the six-county metro Chattanooga area last month was three tenths of a percentage point below the comparable U.S. rate and was within seven tenths of a percentage point of the record low for unemployment reached in April when Chattanooga’s jobless rate dropped to a mere 2.6%.

Tennessee career centers Thursday were advertising 240,810 open jobs across Tennessee, or nearly 2.1 jobs for every Tennessean counted as unemployed and still looking for work last month.

“This very tight labor market means that we have many more job openings than we have unemployed people,” Donald Bruce, director of the Boyd Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Tennessee, said in an email. “While this means that workers have more power and have enjoyed strong earnings growth, it also brings greater pressure on employers to automate as much as possible or reclassify positions to allow for greater flexibility. Tennessee’s employers are clearly facing considerable challenges when it comes to filling available positions.”