Local Unemployment Rates Down from Previous Month, Up from Same Period Last Year

Local unemployment rates appear to be heading back down after their recent spike, but they’re still higher than they were at this time last year.

Starke County’s March unemployment rate was 5.4 percent, according to the latest report from the Indiana Department of Workforce Development. That’s down four-tenths of a percent from the month before but up four-tenths of a percent from March of 2018.

Pulaski County’s unemployment rate remains lower, but the trend is similar. Its March unemployment rate was 3.6 percent, down from four percent the month before but up from 3.3 percent in March of 2018. However, there appear to be more Starke and Pulaski County residents working now than there were a year ago, as both counties’ labor forces have grown somewhat over the past year.

Indiana and the U.S. as a whole both saw a non-seasonally adjusted unemployment rate of 3.9 percent in March.