Iowa’s jobless rate inched up in August, but this time around that’s a positive sign. Workforce analyst Ann Wagner says the state’s economy continues to improve. More people are starting to come back into the labor force, holding unemployment rates high. She explains when people see that the economy’s gotten better they’re encouraged to come back out and look for jobs. Nonfarm employment figures were up by 34-hundred jobs over the month, and increased by 11-thousand-400 jobs since August of 2003. That nonfarm employment was at one-Million-449-thousand-800 jobs…the highest so far this year. There was also improvement in manufacturing, the trade-and-transportation category, and in government. That trade and transportation sector was boosted by the opening of a big new shopping center last month in West Des Moines, with two-thousand people hired to work at stores in the Jordan Creek mall. Education and health was up by 500 jobs, a good sector to be in over the last couple years, and finance jobs barely increased, because she says there were big increased a year ago when consumers were rushing to refinance many loans.
