Saturday, March 26, 2011

Rural unemployment down 1 point from last year

Though the rural unemployment rate increased in January, it was still down one percentage point from the year before, from 11.2 percent to 10.2 percent. The January rate in both urban and exurban counties was 9.7 percent this January, down from 10.4 percent and 10.6 percent, respectively, Bill Bishop of the Daily Yonder reports. While the rural unemployment rate was down as a whole from last year, the largest groups of unemployed remain clustered.

"The counties with large numbers of rural unemployed are clustered in the Southeast, the Midwest, the Northeast and in the large counties in the western states," Bishop writes. "The rural unemployment rate in the states was highest in California, with a rate of 15 percent in rural counties. That is almost four times higher than the 4.3 percent unemployment rate in rural Nebraska, the state with the lowest rural unemployment rate in January." (Read more) (Yonder map omits metropolitan-area counties)

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