Tennessee’s unemployment rates remain low and the state added 45,000 jobs the past year, the National Federation of Independent Business said.
According to the March 2018 numbers from the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development, 82 of the state’s 95 counties saw lower unemployment rates that month than they did in February, NFIB said. The lowest rate, 2.5 percent, was in Williamson County; the highest, 5.8 percent, was in Houston and Bledsoe counties, although that rate was a decrease for both counties from the prior month.
Between April 2017 and April 2018, Tennessee added approximately 45,000 new jobs, with the biggest swells occurring in the leisure/hospitality, professional/business services, and education/health services sectors.
“It doesn’t seem that long ago that several Tennessee counties had unemployment rates in the high teens, so the continuing trend of low unemployment rates across the state is wonderful news,” NFIB/TN State Director Jim Brown said.
The good news continued in April as well. In mid-May, Gov. Bill Haslam and Department of Labor and Workforce Development Commissioner Burns Phillips announced that the statewide unemployment rate in April was 3.4 percent, representing the third consecutive month this number had held steady. April 2018 marked one year since Tennessee’s unemployment rate dropped to 4 percent for the first time in recent history.
“For more than a year now, Tennessee continues to see unemployment rates lower than ever before,” Gov. Haslam said. “These numbers are a testament to the state’s investments in education and job creation. In just the past two weeks, we have announced more than 2,000 new jobs coming to our state.”
