April 7, 2019
By: Dwayne Page
DeKalb County’s unemployment rate for the month of February was 4%, down from 4.8% in January and 4.8% in February, 2018.
The local labor force for February was 7,760. A total of 7,450 were employed and 310 were unemployed.
Jobless rates for February among the fourteen counties in the Upper Cumberland region were as follows from highest to lowest:
Clay: 5.4%
Pickett: 5.3%
Jackson: 4.9%
Cumberland: 4.7%
Van Buren: 4.7%
DeKalb: 4%
Overton: 4%
Fentress: 4%
Warren: 3.8%
White: 3.5%
Putnam: 3.3%
Smith: 2.9%
Cumberland: 2.7%
Macon: 2.7%
Eighty of Tennessee’s 95 counties have an unemployment rate less than 5 percent, a marked improvement from January’s jobless numbers.
“It is encouraging when unemployment rates drop in every county across the state,” said TDLWD Commissioner Jeff McCord.
Williamson County leads the state with the lowest unemployment in February. The county’s 2.2 percent rate is 0.2 of a percentage point lower than the previous month.
Both Davidson and Rutherford counties have the second lowest unemployment rates at 2.3 percent. That marks a 0.3 of a percentage point drop for Davidson County, while Rutherford County is down 0.4 percent of a percentage point when compared to January.
With a rate of 5.9 percent, Lake County has the state’s highest rate of unemployment for February. The latest statistic represents a decrease of 3.4 percentage points from the previous month’s rate.
Hancock County recorded the second highest unemployment rate at 5.8 percent, which is a 1.5 percentage point drop from its January rate.
“It is heartening to see unemployment rates in some of Tennessee’s rural counties rebound from last month,” McCord said. “We will continue to align our efforts with the state’s rural counties to support economic growth.”
Tennessee’s seasonally adjusted statewide unemployment rate reached an all-time low of 3.2 percent in February. That figure bested the previous record low of 3.3 percent, which was the state’s unemployment rate between October and January.
Nationally, unemployment dropped to 3.8 percent, a 0.2 of a percentage point decrease from January’s revised rate of 4 percent.