Local jobless rate rises above U.S. level
Unemployment in the Chattanooga area rose during October above the national jobless rate for the first time in nearly two years as the pace of employment gains in the six-county region over the past 12 months slowed to less than half the growth rate of the previous year.
Although unemployment remains near the historic lows reached a year ago, job figures released Wednesday show the non-seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in metro Chattanooga rose by three tenths of a percentage point to 3.7 percent last month. The comparable, non-seasonally adjusted U.S. jobless rate in October was 3.5 percent and the comparable statewide rate last month was 3.7 percent.
The Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development counted 398 fewer Chattanooga area workers on the job in October than
were working the previous month after seasonal summertime jobs ended. Employment is likely to rise again this month and next as retailers, warehousing operations and trucking firms add workers to handle the crunch of holiday shopping sales.
But last month still marked the first time since the end of 2016 that unemployment in the Chattanooga area was above the U.S. rate, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Statewide, Tennessee employers added 6,000 new non-farm jobs, bringing the total number of new jobs created since October 2017 to more than 59,000.
“Tennessee’s low unemployment continues to prove how well the state’s economy is performing,” Gov. Bill Haslam said in an announcement of the unemployment figures Wednesday. “Just this week, Amazon announced it is bringing 5,000 new jobs to Nashville, the largest job commitment in the history of the state.”
Amazon’s decision to locate a 5,000-person operations hub near downtown Nashville is expected to generate another 8,000 indirect jobs in Davidson County, where unemployment last month was already a mere 2.9 percent.
Tennessee Labor Commissioner Burns Phillips said the Volunteer state is attracting “top-notch professionals who are more than willing to move” to fill the jobs opening up in Tennessee.
Nashville attracted the world’s biggest online retailer with a pitch that boasted, “We are on fire and so are you.”
Indeed, the five Tennessee counties with the lowest jobless rate last month were all in the Nashville area with unemployment rates of 3 percent or less.
In Southeast Tennessee, however, the employment trends were more mixed. In the 13-county Chattanooga region, unemployment was up in five counties, down in four counties and was unchanged in the three others. Bledsoe County, where unemployment rose last month to 6.1 percent, had the second highest jobless rate among all 95 counties in Tennesssee behind only Launderdale County in West Tennessee.
Over the past 12 months, metro Chattanooga employers added 4,118 jobs, growing employment in the 6-county area by 1.6 percent. In the previous 12 months ending in October 2017, Chattanooga added more than twice as many jobs — boosting employment at a torrid 4.2 percent growth pace with the yearly addition of 10,480 jobs.
Chattanooga had one of the fastest growing economies in the state a couple of years ago, but that growth pace appears to be slowing as the region is at or near the full employment point where all qualified workers have jobs.
Despite the slight uptick in the jobless rate, local employers still report that they are searching to fill many job vacancies. Tennessee Career Centers on Wednesday reported having 186,895 job openings across Tennessee, which is 55 percent more than the 120,300 persons in Tennessee who were counted last month as unemployed and looking for work.
“With all-time lows in unemployment rates and unprecedented jobs growth, employers have to be creative in their recruitment strategies and especially competitive in their total benefits packages,” said Merri Mai Williamson, founder and chairperson of Applications Researchers LLC and president of the Chattanooga chapter of the Society of Human Resources Managers. “When surveyed, our 420 members continue to name ‘recruitment’ as one of their challenges. Employers are having to do more to recruit and retain the best talent in this economic environment.”