More Starke and Pulaski County residents headed back to work in April. Starke County’s unemployment rate dropped to 4.9 percent, according to the latest report from the Indiana Department of Workforce Development.
That’s down from 5.4 percent the month before and represents an increase of almost 500 residents working. Pulaski County’s unemployment rate dropped to 3.4 percent, down from four percent in March, with almost 300 more residents employed. The April 2021 numbers are a sharp contrast from April of 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic pushed the unemployment rates into the double digits.
Many businesses are still struggling to find workers. Starke County Economic Development Foundation Executive Director Lisa Dan says there are more than 120 job openings, just in the Knox Industrial Park. “I have been getting an influx of prospective companies looking to locate here,” she told the county commissioners last week. “It’s hard to sell our community to a company, if we don’t have people for jobs.”
She said a recent job fair only drew about six people from the general public. That’s in spite of the fact that almost 500 Starke County and more than 200 Pulaski County residents are believed to be in the labor force but unemployed.
The state as a whole had a non-seasonally adjusted April unemployment rate of 4.2 percent, while the national rate dropped to 5.7 percent.
