Everybody who has skills and wants a job in this economy has one.
Unemployment across Tennessee remained at an historic low last month after employers added 51,600 jobs over the past year in the state.
Jobless in April
* 3.2% in Tennessee, unchanged from the previous month* 3.8% in Georgia, down 0.1% from the previous month* 3.6% in the United States as a whole, down 0.2 percent from the previous monthSources: Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development, Georgia Department of Labor, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
For the third consecutive month, Tennessee's unemployment rate in April remained at 3.2% - well below the U.S. jobless rate last month of 3.6% and the lowest rate since the government has kept comparable statistics in the 1960s.
"At this point, everybody who has skills and wants a job in this economy has one," said Dr. Bill Fox, director of the Boyd Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Tennessee. "Job growth continues to be very, very strong even in the face of a very tight labor market."
In neighboring Georgia, the jobless rate edged a tenth of a percentage point lower last month to 3.8%. Although lower than a year ago, Georgia's unemployment rate remained above the national rate of 3.6% last month and was still higher than the 3.7% jobless rate that the Peach State reached at the end of 2018.
"The annual numbers continue to be strong," Georgia Labor Commissioner Mark Butler said. "While April (employment) numbers were somewhat down, the long-term numbers all trend in the right directions."
Employment growth in Tennessee continues to outpace the U.S. average. In a household survey of workers, the number of Tennesseans on the job last month was up 2.4 percent from a year ago, growing two and a half times faster than the overall U.S. job rate increase of 0.9 percent in the past 12 months.
"We have communities like Nashville which are regarded as very hot right now and communities like Chattanooga which have done well recruiting new business," Fox said. "Tennessee is also well positioned in a world where so many goods are moved all around by e-commerce and we enjoy a state with a relatively low cost of living, low taxes and a good quality of life to attract people and businesses here."
The Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development, which released the jobs report on Thursday, is listing 187,241 jobs at it Career Centers across the state, or nearly 70 percent more job openings than the 110,400 persons the state counted as unemployed last month.
Fox predicts the economy should continue to expand this year, although not as fast as the 3.2 percent annual growth pace recorded in the first quarter.
"As hard as it is to imagine, we expect the unemployment rate could go even lower this year as the economy continues to grow and remain healthy through 2019," he said.
College graduate are enjoying a strong labor market to find jobs, although average wages for college graduates is still up only 1.9 percent from a year ago.
"It's a good time to find a job, but employers have chosen not to bid up wages in order to hire more employees," Fox said.
Global competition and new technologies and automation continue to keep a lid on prices and wages, pushing businesses to hold down costs to meet competition from overseas or employ machines to replace workers when wages get too high., Fox said.
The average manufacturing wage in Tennessee in April was $20.11 an hour, up 20 cents an hour from the previous month but still 8.8 percent below the U.S. average manufacturing wage of $22.04 an hour.
Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfreepress.com or at 757-6340