Jobless rates up in fewer metro areas from June to July
WASHINGTON -- In a sharp improvement, the largest U.S. metropolitan areas were evenly split in July between those where unemployment rates rose from June and those where rates fell.
In June, by contrast, 90% of the 380 metro areas had seen their jobless rates rise from the previous month.
Much of the improvement was due to seasonal factors. They include the hiring of farm workers in many agricultural states and lower unemployment in college towns after a jump at the start of summer.
The metro employment figures, issued Tuesday by the Labor Department, aren't adjusted for such seasonal changes, so they tend to be volatile from month to month. And many of the changes in local unemployment rates in July were too small to signal larger trends.
The local figures also reflect the modest improvement seen at the national level in July, when the jobless rate fell to 9.4%, from 9.5% in June. On Friday, the Labor Department will report the national unemployment rate for August. Many economists expect it to tick back up to 9.5%.
An Associated Press analysis of Labor Department data found that unemployment rates fell in 168 metro areas and rose in 168 others. No change was recorded in the remaining 44 areas.
The biggest improvement occurred in Kokomo, Ind. Its jobless rate dropped to 14.4% in July from 19.1% the previous month. The reopening of a Chrysler plant that makes transmissions caused much of that drop, said Christopher Cornell, an economist at Moody's Economy.com.
Chrysler reopened many factories in late June and July after emerging from bankruptcy protection. The company employed more than 4,500 people in the Kokomo area at the end of last year.
But Fiat Group, which owns a 20% stake in the company and manages Chrysler, is deciding which plants to close permanently.
"People are extremely nervous in Kokomo," Cornell said. "Their fate is literally up in the air."
Other areas that saw sharp drops in their unemployment rates were Wenatchee-East Wenatchee, Wash., Bismarck, N.D., and Grand Forks, N.D., all of which include agricultural production. Wenatchee bills itself the "apple capital of the world."
