Chattanooga area employers add 6,723 jobs in 2019 but local jobless rate edges up

Unemployment jumps to 12.2% in Chattooga County

Josh Ball, a human resources senior specialist at DENSO, speaks with Larry Luttrell during a job fair put on by EPIC Talent Solutions Wednesday, August 22, 2018 at the Chattanooga Times Free Press in Chattanooga, Tennessee. DENSO was at the event to hire a variety of employees including, but not limited to individuals with production, engineering or accounting backgrounds.
Josh Ball, a human resources senior specialist at DENSO, speaks with Larry Luttrell during a job fair put on by EPIC Talent Solutions Wednesday, August 22, 2018 at the Chattanooga Times Free Press in Chattanooga, Tennessee. DENSO was at the event to hire a variety of employees including, but not limited to individuals with production, engineering or accounting backgrounds.

Unemployment edged up last month in the Chattanooga area, ending 2019 with a higher jobless rate than a year earlier for the first time in a decade.

But local employers still boosted overall hiring last year and added nearly 3% more jobs in the 6-county Chattanooga area as the economic expansion enters its record 11th year of continuous growth in 2020.

The Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development reported Thursday that unemployment in the 6-county Chattanooga area rose to 3.3% last month, up from the 2.9% rate in November and the highest rate since last August.

Metro Chattanooga ended 2019 with a jobless rate of 3.3%, which remained below the U.S. jobless rate of 3.4%. But the local unemployment rate was still higher than a year ago when the 6-county Chattanooga metro area ended 2018 with unemployment at 3.1%.

"When unemployment is this low, the variations in these numbers don't mean a lot because everybody who wants a job pretty much already has one," said Mark Campbell, owner of the Manpower franchise in Chattanooga and Cleveland who has worked in the staffing industry for nearly three decades. "I"ve never seen the job market this tight and 2020 looks like another very strong year for hiring with Chattanooga being one of the strongest job markets anywhere."

Chattanooga employers added a net 6,753 jobs during the past 12 months, according to the job figures released by Tennessee's labor department. But the local labor force of people seeking jobs rose even more, which raised the unemployment rate. Employers trying to fill job vacancies welcomed the growth in the labor force.

"Tennessee is pretty much at full employment now and that is beginning to be a constraint on growth for some businesses that are expanding and needing more workers," said Dr. Bill Fox, director of the Boyd Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Tennessee. "To meet the demand for more workers, we need to recruit more people to the state, encourage more people to re-enter the workforce and upgrade the skills and productivity of our workforce."

In December, the state labor department counted a total of 104,990 persons unemployed but still looking for another job across Tennessee. That was only about half as many as the 200,581 jobs that Tennessee Career Centers are now listing and trying to fill across the state.

In metro Chattanooga, the jobless rate has dropped by more than two-thirds over the past decade from the 10.2% peak reached in the summer of 2009 during the Great Recession.

In the past decade, Chattanooga area employment has grown by more than 33,000 jobs, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In the Chattanooga region in just the past five years, the Tennessee Valley Authority counts more than $3.8 billion of new investment from new and expanding companies and collectively those businesses have added more than 37,000 jobs.

The growth has been even faster in Middle Tennessee. Last month, the jobless rate in December was near historic lows in the Nashville area where Williamson County continued to have Tennessee's lowest unemployment rate at 2.2%, and Davidson, Rutherford and Cheatham counties each had an unemployment rate of only 2.3% in December.

But while joblessness remained low in major urban counties, some rural counties in the Chattanooga region had some of the highest jobless rates in the Mid-South.

The highest unemployment rate in either Tennessee or Georgia last month was in Chattooga County in North Georgia where plant closings and seasonal cuts in Northwest Georgia pushed up the jobless rate to 12.2% _ or four times the statewide average. Last year, Mohawk Industries closed its tufting mill in Lyerly, Ga., cutting 250 jobs.

Elsewhere in Georgia, unemployment in metropolitan Dalton fell to 4.7% compared with 4.9% a year ago. But Dalton still had the highest jobless rate of any of the 14 metropolitan areas in Georgia last month.

Dalton ended December with 69,200 jobs. That's an increase of about 300 jobs when compared to a year earlier.

"We saw over-the-year growth in almost every MSA (metropolitan statistical area), and our key jobs sectors continue to grow as the economy expands," Georgia Labor Commissioner Mark Butler said. "This was a very positive year for the state."

In Southeast Tennessee, Rhea County had the state's fourth highest jobless rate in December at 5.5%, behind only Clay and Lincoln counties where unemployment was 6.2% and McNairy county with a 6% jobless rate in December. Meigs County's 5.4% jobless rate and Bledsoe County's 5.1% jobless rate were also among the highest of Tennessee's 95 counties last month.

Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfreepress.com or at 423-757-6340.

Jobless in December

Among the 18 counties in the Chattanooga region in Tennessee and Georgia, only four had a lower unemployment rate in December 2019 than the U.S. average of 3.4%.* Dade County, Ga. - 2.8%* Hamilton County, 3.1%* Bradley County, 3.2%* Coffee County, 3.2%* Franklin County, 3.4%* McMinn County, 3.8%* Grundy County, 3.8%* Van Buren, 3.8%* Sequatchie County, 3.9%* Polk County, 3.9%* Marion County, 4.3%* Walker County, Ga. - 4.4%* Whitfield County, Ga. - 4.4%* Bledsoe County, 5.1%* Rhea County, 5.5%* Murray County, Ga. - 5.6%* Chattooga County, Ga., - 12.2%Sources: Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development, Georgia Department of Labor. Data is for non-seasonally adjusted unemployment rates for December 2019.

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