West Virginia’s unemployment rate again hit a new low of 3.7 percent.
That’s been the trend over the past few months as the state’s unemployment rate has gone from a seasonally-adjusted 4.3 percent last October, November and December to 4.1 percent in January to 3.9 percent in February and then to 3.7 percent for March.
The unemployment rate reflects people actively searching for work. Those who have stopped looking cease to be counted.
The national unemployment rate dropped two-tenths of a percentage point to 3.6 percent in March. Nationally, the number of unemployed people decreased by 318,000 to 6 million.
Gov. Jim Justice was again effusive about West Virginia’s unemployment rate.
“We are setting all-time, all-time records in low unemployment in West Virginia,” the governor said during a briefing today.
The governor suggested that West Virginians should use the rate as a matter of bragging rights.
“What we need to do is — all those naysayers, all those doubters, and you know who I’m talking about, for crying out loud they’re out there all over the place — what you need to do is rub their nose in it,” Justice said.
Workforce West Virginia reported that the number of unemployed state residents declined by 1,700 to 29,100. Total employment grew by 2,100 over the month.
“That’s definitely a good sign that we have overall growth in the number of employed outpacing the change in the number of unemployed,” said Brian Lego, an economist at West Virginia University.
The trend is a major improvement from the 15.5 percent unemployment rate West Virginia hit in April 2020, as the emerging covid-19 pandemic prompted a sharp economic downturn.
“For one thing it’s showing that the labor market has definitely healed for the most part from the downfall we had in the early days of the pandemic and just general business and consumer concerns over the virus,” Lego said.
West Virginia’s labor force participation rate continues to be a major challenge.
“Among the people actively participating in the labor force, the rate of joblessness is extremely low. But you still have this segment of the population that continues to have low rates of workforce participation,” Lego said.
That rate, which measures the total number of employed plus those looking for work up against the state’s overall population, has been rising somewhat but is still about 55 percent for West Virginia. Nationally, the labor force participation rate is 62.4 percent.
“I would say if you look at the numbers a little deeper over a longer timeframe we’re still having that issue of a low labor force participation rate,” Lego said.