The December unemployment rate moved up one tenth of a percent to 3.2%. Iowa Workforce Development director Beth Townsend says that comes as more people were looking for jobs.

“The good news is that our labor force participation rate went up for the second month in a row,” she says. “It was primarily driven by college graduates, or community college graduates, getting into the job market. So it’s a good sign when they finish up their programs that they’re going right into the workforce. ” Townsend says some of the job gains were offset by loses. “Businesses added 4,000 jobs in December, which is which was following 3,300 jobs that were added in November. So that’s a good trend. We’re glad to see that, but I think it is a little bit of a mixed bag. We have seen manufacturing layoffs here in Iowa, especially in our ag industries,” Townsend says.

She says overall the positive news outweighed the negative. “The good news was we saw increased hiring. In construction, they added 800 jobs, and for the first time in a very long time, or at least since July, we saw trade and transportation added 600 jobs in December, and that thing’s moving in the economy. So that’s a really good sign. We’re happy to see that increase,” she says.

Townsend says there’s always a stop in February and the next unemployment numbers won’t come out until March. “It’ll be interesting to see in March, then, what the impact of some of the changes that the President is implementing,  I think, will be far enough removed from the election to see some impact of the election on the economy. December, I think, was too soon,” Townsend says.

The U.S. unemployment rate decreased to 4.1% in December.

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