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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 fell slightly in November, dipping to 9.6 percent, the Indiana Department of Workforce
Development said Friday morning.
The state’s jobless rate decreased by 0.2 percentage points, from a seasonally
adjusted rate of 9.8 percent in October.
DWD Commissioner Teresa Voors said Indiana’s unemployment rate
seems to have peaked in the mid- to upper-9 percent range.
“It is encouraging to see a slowing of job losses
as evidenced by 40 percent fewer initial claims for unemployment when compared to November of last year,” she said.
Indiana had an unemployment rate of 7 percent in November 2008.
The number of unemployed Hoosiers
dropped to 288,696 in November from a revised 291,527 in October.
Indiana still has the lowest
unemployment rate among its neighboring states. Kentucky’s rate dropped last month to 10.6 percent,
Illinois’ to 10.9 percent and Michigan’s to 14.7 percent. Ohio’s rate grew 0.1 percentage
point, to 10.6 percent.
Satewide, private education and health services, as well as financial
services, were among the segments reporting job declines last month.
The manufacturing sector added 5,200 jobs,
mainly from recalls of temporarily laid-off auto workers. No other sectors reported significant employment gains in the month.
The non-seasonally adjusted jobless rate in the Indianapolis metro area was 8.2 percent in
November, up slightly from a revised 8.1 percent in October.
Nationally, the number of newly
laid off workers filing claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly rose.
The Labor Department
said Thursday that the number of new jobless claims rose to 480,000 nationally last week, up 7,000 from the previous week.
That was a worse performance than the decline to 465,000 that economists had expected.
The
U.S. jobless rate did dip in November to 10 percent, down from a 26-year high of 10.2 percent in October.
But analysts are worried that unemployment will resume rising in coming months and will not peak until
hitting 10.5 percent next summer.
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