State jobless rate dips to 3.5%, U.S. says

Record-low unemployment reached in April for fourth month in row, data show

Arkansas’ unemployment rate continues to drop, hitting 3.5 percent in April compared with 3.6 percent in March, a record low for the fourthstraight month, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said Friday.

The national unemployment rate was 4.4 percent in April.

The state’s unemployment rate was 3.8 percent in January, a record at the time, and dropped one-tenth of a percentage point every month until April’s low of 3.5 percent.

Two other states, Colorado and Oregon, also had record-low unemployment rates in April.

Arkansas’ April unemployment rate is the 13th-lowest in the country.

State economists agreed that April’s unemployment report was good news.

“We’re inching down month by month,” said Michael Pakko, chief economist at the Institute for Economic Advancement at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

Arkansas’ unemployment rate is 0.9 of a percentage

point below the national average.

“That’s probably the most significant fact that we could point out about the [state’s] unemployment rate,” Pakko said.

Several economic indicators are improving at the same time, said Mervin Jebaraj, interim director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.

Gross domestic product growth is positive, small-business sentiment is up, housing market indexes are up and consumer sentiment has been about as high as it has been since before the recession, Jebaraj said.

“Looking at all those different factors combined, obviously the economy nationally as well as the state is improving,” Jebaraj said.

But there is still some slack in the labor market, Jebaraj said.

“Some people are still working part time and there are still some discouraged workers,” Jebaraj said. “So there is still some room for us to reduce the unemployment rate while growing the labor force. That’s what has happened in the past few months here in Arkansas.”

An unemployment rate of 3.5 percent is in the range of full employment, Pakko said. Full employment is the state of the economy where all who are able and willing to work are employed.

“That’s not to say that there aren’t some skills mismatches and geographic mismatches,” Pakko said. “There are some jobs where there doesn’t appear to be enough qualified people to fill them. Some areas of the state have much higher unemployment rates than others. The opportunities aren’t always evenly distributed.”

The country is in the third-longest economic expansion and on the heels of passing the second-longest expansion of the 1960s, Jebaraj said. The longest economic expansion occurred in the 1990s, he said.

The overall growth rate in other expansions was faster than it is now, Jebaraj said.

“Previous growth rates have been around 3.5 percent to 4 percent [a year],” he said. “These growth rates are around 2.5 to 3 percent.”

There were almost 6,900 fewer unemployed Arkansans in April than in April 2015 and 9,714 more employed Arkansans over the same period.

The state’s 3.5 percent unemployment rate “tells us that we are on the right track in terms of implementing conservative policies that spur job creation and put Arkansans to work,” Gov. Asa Hutchinson said in a prepared statement.

“Our unemployment rate is even more impressive when you consider that the number of employees on the government payroll is shrinking, while private sector employment and the labor force participation rate continue to climb,” Hutchinson said.

There were 215,600 Arkansans in the government sector in April, 1,900 fewer than in April last year, the biggest decline of any sector. There were 19,700 more payroll jobs in April than in April 2016 in all 11 industry sectors.

In the past year, jobs increased in seven sectors and declined in four.

The educational and health services sector had the biggest increase with 7,000 more jobs in 12 months. There were 5,700 more jobs in the professional and business services sector since April last year. Manufacturing was up 3,500 jobs.

Unemployment rates were lower in 10 states in April compared with March, higher in one state and stable in 39 states.

Colorado had the lowest unemployment rate in April at 2.3 percent, followed by Hawaii and North Dakota at 2.7 percent each, and New Hampshire and South Dakota at 2.8 percent each.

New Mexico had the highest unemployment rate at 6.7 percent, followed by Alaska at 6.6 percent, Louisiana at 5.8 percent, Alabama at 5.4 percent and Georgia and Texas at 5.0 percent each.