Chattanooga jobless rate falls to 16-year low

Unemployment declines across six-county region

Unemployment in metropolitan Chattanooga fell last month to its lowest level in 16 years as employers in the six-county region added nearly 7,800 jobs in the past year.

The Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development said Chattanooga’s jobless rate in May fell by a half of a percentage point to 3.3 percent — the lowest rate since May 2001. Employment over the past year in metro Chattanooga grew by nearly 3.2 percent, or 7,793 net new jobs.

In neighboring metro Cleveland, Tenn., unemployment fell even more by seven tenths of a percent to 2.9 percent — the lowest level since comparable records are available, dating back to the turn of the last century.

“We continue to see a substantial drop in the unemployment rate of our

“This shows that job growth in Tennessee isn’t exclusive to our major metropolitan areas; people are returning to the workforce in every corner of our state.”

–BURNS PHILLIPS, TENNESSEE LABOR COMMISSIONER

metropolitan areas, which is great,” Tennessee Labor Commissioner Burns Phillips said in a report on county jobless rates for May. “But the most encouraging numbers are coming from Tennessee’s distressed counties, many of which saw a significant drop in their unemployment rates.”

Rhea County continued to have the highest jobless rate among Tennessee’s 95 counties, but unemployment in Rhea County plunged during May by 1.5 percent from April’s level — the biggest percentage drop on any county in Tennessee.

Rhea was the only county in the state with an unemployment rate above 5.0 percent in May.

The jobless rate fell in every county except Cannon County.

“This shows that job growth in Tennessee isn’t exclusive to our major metropolitan areas; people are returning to the workforce in every corner of our state,” Phillips said.

Preliminary unemployment rates have fallen for both Tennessee, which fell to 4 percent in May, and the United States, which declined last month to 4.3 percent.

In neighboring Georgia, the jobless rate fell in May by 0.1 percent to 4.9 percent, and the jobless rate in metropolitan Dalton was unchanged at 5.2 percent.

“We continued to see really strong employment growth in Tennessee, especially in Cleveland and Chattanooga, and that combined with the non-seasonally adjusted nature of these figures pushed the unemployment rate to these very low rates,” said Dr. Bill Fox, director of the Boyd Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Tennessee. “The good news is that everyone who wants a job at these current set of wage rates probably has one if they have the proper skills. But employers are also being challenged to find enough people that can fit their needs and in many instances may be forced to raise their wages to recruit more workers.”

Fox said such trends underscore the need for the Tennessee Promise and Reconnect Tennessee programs designed to help more Tennesseans to get post-secondary skills training or college degrees to land one of the available jobs.

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