The state unemployment rate remained at 6% in July. Iowa Workforce Development spokesperson, Kerry Koonce, says the rate stayed the same for the fourth straight month.
Koonce says that’s fairly traditional as you come out of a recession, since unemployment is a lagging indicator and is one of the last ones to change. She says we are having job growth versus job loss, but it’s going to take awhile for the unemployment rate to go down.
Koonce says there are a variety of people who snap up the new jobs when they’re created. She says new people who were unemployed or are changing jobs, are filling the new jobs that’ve been created. Koonce says college graduates are in the workforce now looking for jobs, and people who gave up on finding a job before have started looking again. She says several areas have seen job growth.
Koonce says construction added 1,600 jobs this past month and is up 2,500 total, we are up 1,800 the last month in manufacturing for a yearly increase of 5,900. She says financial activities added jobs, as did professional and business services. She says the education and health services area has continued to remain strong throughout the recession.
While the unemployment rate hasn’t moved much this year, Koonce says the addition of jobs is keeping things going in the right direction. Koonce says the state has added jobs in all but one month of 2011, “so that’s positive for us in our recovery.”
The national unemployment rate for July dropped to slightly to 9.1% from 9.2% in June.