Washington County unemployment rate jumps to 5.9%

Washington County's unemployment rate jumped to 5.9% in January, 2012. More importantly, the County's number of unemployed grew from about 600 to about 700. This happened in conjunction with the labor force holding steady and the number of employed persons falling. A year ago in January 2011, the unemployment rate was 6.4%. The trend toward higher unemployment in January is historically typical in Washington County due to some seasonal patterns of the areas manufacturing and construction employers.

Even with small up and down changes to labor force and employment, most Eastern Iowa counties had a jump in the unemployment rate. This is in contrast to the state as a whole which had a drop in unemployment and the unemployment rate.

Nationally, the unemployment rate droped by 0.2% to 8.3%. The national labor force also grew, along with the number of employed persons.

Of the estimated 700 unemployed persons, 323 were drawing Unemployment Insurance benefits (up from 206 in December). About 

46% of unemployed persons are receiving Unemployment benefits. For 12 of those receiving Unemployment benefits, their last payment occurred in January, while 147 received their first Unemployment benefit payment (up from 62 in December).

Detailed employment and wage information is not available for the current period. The county data lags about 2-3 quarters, so the most recent information is for the 2nd Quarter of 2011. Its still pretty interesting.

The 

State and County data is from the Labor Market and Economic Research Bureau of the Iowa Workforce Development. The industry sector employment data is from the Employment Statistics Bureau's

IWIN Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages at Iowa Workforce Development.