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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowIndiana’s unemployment rate climbed to 8.3 percent in August, marking the third straight month the rate has increased.
The Indiana Department of Workforce Development said Friday morning that the rate increased from 8.2 percent in July. It was 8 percent in June.
The rate is higher than the national rate of 8.1 percent.
Indiana’s jobless rate has been at 8 percent or above in all but two month since December 2008. It was 9.3 percent a year ago.
Indiana added 11,000 private-sector jobs in August, the 10th straight month the state has reported an increase. So far this year, the state’s overall job-growth rate of 0.3 percent continues to exceed the national average of 0.1 percent, the state said.
The DWD, however, continues to take issue with how the federal government calculates the state’s unemployment rate.
“Yet another month the federal government has notified us our unemployment rate increased while we added actual jobs,” DWD Commissioner Scott B. Sanders said in a prepared statement. “We have repeatedly questioned their data models. It’s pretty obvious the numbers just don’t add up.”
Statewide non-farm employment in August totaled 3.2 million on a seasonally adjusted basis. A total of 253,393 sought unemployment benefits, down from a revised 264,304 in July.
Sectors showing employment gains in August included private educational and health services (5,200), construction (2,200) and trade transportation and utilities (1,900).
Sectors showing the biggest employment loss were government (2,200), financial activities (1,900), professional and business services (1,800), and manufacturing (1,200).
In the Indianapolis metro area, the non-seasonally adjusted jobless rate was 7.6 percent in August, down from 8.8 percent in August 2011.
However, the area lost jobs, dropping to 828,040 in August from 833,859 a year earlier.
Comparisons of metro areas are more accurately made using the same months in prior years because the government does not adjust the figures for factory furloughs and other seasonal fluctuations.
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