County unemployment numbers for April, just out, continue to show some job growth in rural areas

The Daily Yonder's Bill Bishop reports that unemployment in rural America continues to fall with the average unemployment rate in rural counties at 7.7 percent in April. The jobless rate in counties that are near metropolitan areas but are largely rural in character declined to 7.2 percent. Both of these percentages were below the 7.8 average seen in metropolitan counties that month. The figures on county unemployment were just released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (Read more)

The drop in unemployment in rural counties represents a full percentage point since April 2011. That's 115,831 more jobs over last year. In the U.S. as a whole, there are 1,547,522 more jobs this April than in April 2011, an increase of just over one percent.