Unemployment rates in Middle Tennessee continued to climb in June.....Jobless rate rises in all Tennessee counties

I love this: "most June-over-May hikes are minimal."

Yeah, right.

Ask the people who lost jobs how "minimal" they were in keeping them from living under the nearest overpass....


Jobless rate rises in all Tennessee counties | www.tennessean.com | The Tennessean

Jobless rate rises in all Tennessee counties

Most June-over-May hikes are minimal

By G. CHAMBERS WILLIAMS III • Staff Writer • July 25, 2008


Unemployment rates in Middle Tennessee continued to climb in June, but the increases from May were less than 1 percentage point in the Nashville area as well as most of the rest of the state, according to figures released Thursday by the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development.

All of the state's 95 counties showed unemployment increases for the month, a sign that the economic slowdown is continuing to have an effect on jobs, said Bill Fox, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Tennessee.
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The biggest increases in the state's unemployment figures appeared in the changes from this time last year. In June 2007, the unemployment rates for Middle Tennessee counties ranged from 3.7 to 5.7 percent. This year they ranged from 4.8 percent to 8.4 percent.
Maury rate falls from '07

Maury County, where GM is set to reopen an auto manufacturing plant, is the only county to have shown a year-over-year drop in the unemployment rate, even though its number was still higher than last month.

Overall, the state's June unemployment rate stands at 6.5 percent, a full percentage point higher than the national average.

"Clearly, the rates are going up, and have risen rather markedly over the past several months," Fox said. "Manufacturing continues to be the most-affected, but that is not new. We have been losing manufacturing jobs in Tennessee and across the nation for a decade."

Davidson County's unemployment rate was 5.7 percent in June, up seven-tenths of a percentage point from May, and an increase of 1.9 points from June 2007, the state said.

One bright spot was Williamson County, which posted the lowest jobless rate in the state for June, with 4.8 percent. That was up six-tenths of a percentage point from May, and eight-tenths of a percentage point above the June 2007 rate.

Williamson's job situation has been helped by the restart of production at the General Motors Corp. plant in Spring Hill, which had laid off 2,400 people at the end of April 2007. Most of those workers have now been recalled.

The newest jobs data show that "Tennessee is not immune to the variations in the national economy," said Matt Kisber, the state's commissioner of economic and community development.

But the state is working to bring new jobs — especially higher-paying manufacturing positions — to help offset job losses stemming from the current national economic downturn, he said.

Among recent successes were persuading GM to revive the Spring Hill plant for a new Chevrolet crossover utility vehicle, and the announcement last week that Volkswagen would build a new assembly plant in Chattanooga, Kisber said.
Health care stays strong

While manufacturing leads in job losses in the state, "We're seeing modest losses across most industries," Fox said. "Residential construction has been very hard hit, but some commercial construction has remained strong."

Health care has continued to be the most robust sector in the state's economy, and is still showing strong growth.

"General-merchandise stores are seeing some gains, too," he said, adding that retail growth could be a result of the federal government's economic-stimulus payments.

The county-by-county jobless data show a continuation of a trend in which more service companies are cutting jobs in response to belt tightening by consumers.

Nationally, the number of newly laid-off people filing claims for unemployment benefits bolted past 400,000 last week as companies trimmed their work forces to cope with a slowing economy and fallout from a weaker housing market.

The U.S. Labor Department reported Thursday that the number of new applications filed for those benefits rose by a seasonally adjusted 34,000 to 406,000 for the week ending July 19.

That matched the level seen in late March. The last time claims were higher was after the devastation of the Gulf Coast hurricanes in mid-September 2005.

"The bottom line is that U.S. unemployment, while relatively low by historical standards, is still higher than we would like, and we continue to take action to return to strong job creation," said White House press secretary Dana Perino.

Nervous employers, chafing under higher energy prices and uncertain about the national economy's direction, have cut jobs for six months in a row. The U.S. unemployment rate — at 5.5 percent in June — is expected to climb to 6 percent or higher by early next year, analysts say.