Iowa Workforce Development director Beth Townsend says the May unemployment rate dropped down slightly from the 3.3% in April.
“Went down to 3.2% and was down from 3.6% a year ago. We gained 3,400 jobs between April and May, which was a good sign,” she says. Townsend says job growth is slowly moving up. “We saw durable goods manufacturing increase by 600 jobs, which is a nice increase. Construction remains 1,700 jobs ahead of where it was the same time last year again. So that’s also a good sign. So we’re trending in the right direction, even though it’s slow growth,” she says..
Townsend says the state has added 8,200 jobs since February. Iowa’s labor force participation rate was down one tenth of a point in May compared to April. “So labor force participation is made-up of everyone who is employed and also looking for work, so unemployed. The reason we saw a decrease in May, not surprising, we generally see a lot of retirements in May. And so probably it was just people dropping out of the workforce as part of a retirement plan.
Townsend says the state still has more than 57,000 job openings.
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