The state’s unemployment rate dropped again in June after holding steady in May. “We are now at 3.7 percent, ranking fifth in the United States,” Iowa Workforce Development spokesman, Ed Wallace says.
The May unemployment rate was 3.8 percent and it was the first time in seven months the rate did not drop. The drop in the unemployment rate in June continues moving the state toward what’s called full employment.
“Full employment is considered 3.5 percent, currently at 3.7 we are very close there,” according to Wallace. “Most of the time you have about three percent of the workforce in transition of some kind.”
Wallace says there were 3,000 non-farm jobs added in June. “The numbers tells us that a lot of our fellow Iowans are finding jobs in trade and transportation in the private sector. Additionally, we’ve had job gains in all quadrants of the state throughout a number of different industries,” Wallace says. “Mostly people are staying in positions a little bit longer and we are seeing fewer retirements over the last two quarters.”
He says not all sectors of the job market saw gains. “We’ve seen some job loss in health services over this past cycle, but we do expect that to recover,” Wallace says. The report says education and health services lost 22-hundred jobs and leisure and hospitality lost 2,100 after both of the sectors have had strong hiring through the first part of the year.
The state unemployment rate was 4.4 percent one year ago in June. The U.S. unemployment rate dropped to 5.3 percent in June.