Putnam jobless rate holding

So when is the status quo not exactly the status quo?

Apparently whenever statistics get involved -- think Benjamin Disraeli’s famed lies, damned lies and statistics line -- which is how Putnam County could post an identical unemployment rate for two straight months but end up falling a number of spots in the monthly state rankings.

The latest Indiana unemployment figures -- October numbers -- have been released by the Indiana Department of Workforce Development. And for the second straight month, Putnam County has posted a 3.3 percent jobless rate.

That’s good for a tie for 43rd place among Indiana’s 92 counties, although not as good as it was just a month ago when the same rating translated into a tie for 35th place.

The October Putnam County figure is still better than all contiguous counties with the exception of Hendricks, 2.9 percent and tied for 14th best overall, and Montgomery, 3.0 percent and in a tie for 22nd overall.

Morgan County tied Putnam with 3.3 percent, while Clay County, at 3.5 percent, jumped up to a tie for 49th spot for October. Parke County, at 3.7 percent, was tied for 63rd, while Owen County was eighth worst among the 92 counties at 4.1 percent, tied with Sullivan, Vigo and Starke counties in the bottom 10.

The top 10 Hoosier jobless rates for October belong to: Elkhart, 2.5; LaGrange and Adams, 2.4; Dubois, 2.5; Kosciusko, Steuben and Bartholomew, 2.6; Hamilton and Decatur, 2.7; and Whitley, DeKalb, Daviess and Boone, all knotted at 2.8 percent.

At the opposite end of the unemployment spectrum, posting the worst Indiana jobless rates for October were: Vermillion, 5.1 percent; Lake and Fayette, 5.0; Newton, 4.5; Greene, 4.3; Delaware and LaPorte, 4.2; Owen, Starke, Sullivan and Vigo, 4.1 percent.

Indiana’s unemployment rate stands at 3.9 percent for October and remains lower than the national rate of 4.1 percent.

With the exception of one month when it was equal (October 2014), Indiana’s unemployment rate now has been below the U.S. rate for four full years.

The monthly unemployment rate is a U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) indicator that reflects the number of unemployed people seeking employment within the prior four weeks as a percentage of the labor force.

Indiana’s labor force had a net decrease of 11,694 over the previous month, which was a result of 2,351 unemployed residents seeking employment and a 14,045 decrease in residents employed. Indiana’s total labor force stands at 3.33 million, and the state’s 64.2 percent labor force participation rate remains above the national rate of 62.7 percent.

In addition, Indiana’s initial and ongoing unemployment insurance claims con