State jobless rate falls to 3.4% in May

Graphs and information about the Arkansas and U.S. joblessness rates.
Graphs and information about the Arkansas and U.S. joblessness rates.

Arkansas' unemployment rate in May dipped to 3.4 percent, nearly a full percentage point better than the U.S. average and setting a record low for the fifth-straight month, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said Friday.

The unemployment rate in Arkansas in April was 3.5 percent.

The national unemployment rate in May was 4.3 percent, one-tenth of a percentage point lower than in April.

Two states joined Arkansas in seeing record low unemployment: Oregon, 3.6 percent, and Washington, 4.5 percent. Mississippi's 4.9 percent also is a record low, but it was spurred by a decrease in the number of people looking for work, the bureau said.

The civilian labor force in Arkansas rose by 7,539 in May, with 8,604 newly employed workers and 1,065 people who left the labor force.

The total employed labor force stood at 1,309,035, the highest number of employed Arkansans since August 2008, according to the state Department of Workforce Services. When people looking for work are included, the labor force stood at 1,355,668 in May.

"It was a pretty strong report overall," Michael Pakko, chief economist at the Institute for Economic Advancement at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, said. "The bottom line is, the rate is very low and that's good news. Employment is increasing, in both the payroll survey and the household survey."

In a telephone interview and on his blog, Pakko tempered the good numbers somewhat. "The number of employed was up 8,604 in May after increasing 7,887 (revised) in April," he wrote. "These recent increases are reminiscent of early 2016, when household employment increased by an average of 10,000 per month for three months. At the time, we were skeptical of the magnitude of those increases, and subsequent data revisions eliminated that brief surge from the record."

While employment in manufacturing has yet to fully recover from the recession of 2007-2009, job growth continues in that sector, with about 3,400 new jobs in the past year.

Larger growth continues in the leisure/hospitality sectors and professional/business services, Pakko said. Those numbers also are reflected in the low unemployment rates and higher job-growth rates especially seen in central Arkansas, the Fayetteville-Rogers corridor in Northwest Arkansas and around Jonesboro in northeast Arkansas, he said.

The nonfarm payroll summary report, which accompanied the unemployment statistics, showed that eight major sectors added jobs during the past 12 months. Those eight and their gains were:

Professional/Business services: 9,000

Education/Health services: 6,200

Manufacturing: 3,400

Other: 2,200

Leisure/Hospitality: 2,100

Financial: 900

Trade/Transportation/Utilities: 700

Construction: 400

Government employment declined by 1,400 jobs in the past year. Jobs in the mining/logging sector declined by 200, and the information sector lost 500 jobs.

"We're continuing to see record lows, and that's indicative of how well, generally, the economy is doing nationwide," said Mervin Jebaraj, interim director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.

The loss of jobs in retail continues to be a concern, Jebaraj said.

Arkansas lost 700 jobs in retail from May 2016 to May 2017, he said. Some 80,000 jobs have been lost in retail nationally just since January. Those jobs losses are particularly heavy in metropolitan areas, he said.

Another continuing trend is Northwest Arkansas leading the rest of the state in creating jobs. Of 22,000 new jobs in Arkansas in the past year, Northwest Arkansas produced 46 percent, or 10,500, of them, he said.

Business on 06/17/2017

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