Unemployment Rate Drops Nearly a Point Since Last Month

Well, some good news for the first time in a long time on the unemployment rate front as we learned that Mississippi’s unemployment rate fell to 8.6 percent, which matches the national average.

The state’s unemployment rate was 9.4 percent in March. This calculates to about 3,100 more people working over the past month.

Without looking at the numbers specifically, I would venture to guess that a lot of the new jobs were temporary census jobs. Obviously those are not going to be around forever, but can hopefully fill some holes until the economy fully recovers and jobs start coming back.

Another thought is that this is the first time in awhile that Mississippi is on par with the national average unemployment rate. Mississippi is not a boom and bust state like say California or Florida who saw very low unemployment rates when the economy was cruising along, but have seen huge job losses and now have higher unemployment rates than Mississippi.

Further, Mississippi’s unemployment rate is now on par with Alabama, and better than that of Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, Kentucky, and the Carolina’s. States to the west of the Mississippi such as Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Oklahoma have done a very good job of maintaining among the lowest unemployment rates in the country (ranging from 6.2 to 6.7 percent).

That said, I hope the unemployment rate decrease is a sign of things to come, rather than just one good month during a year of bad job loses.