Iowa’s unemployment rate held at 6.7% in September to match the August rate. Iowa Workforce Development spokesperson, Kerry Koonce, says holding steady is a positive. Koonce says they don’t really start figuring trends until they see one quarter’s worth of change. But she says it is a positive that Iowa didn’t have a gain while the national unemployment went up.
The U.S. unemployment rate edged up to 9.8% in September from 9.7% in August. Koonce says more people were working in September. Koonce says the size of the labor force went up and the job losses were not as heavy has they have been in some areas. She says some areas actually added jobs, such as education and health services, which added 1,600 jobs.
There were some down areas. Koonce says the trade, transportation and utilities area lost 45-hundred jobs. She says three-thousand of the jobs were in the retail area, and says it is common as businesses cut temporary summer help. Koonce says we won’t see the impact of temporary holiday hiring for another month. The number of workers estimated as being unemployed held at 113,100 in September. One year ago, the count stood at 71,000 as the unemployment rate was 4.2% in September 2008.