Putnam jobless rate for December at 3.1 percent

Tuesday, January 28, 2020

There’s good news and bad news with Putnam County’s latest jobless figure.

At 3.1 percent, it’s the lowest it has been in several months. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that the remaining 3.1 percent of the employment pool is considered virtually unemployable. There are those with child-care issues, those with transportation issues and of course, those who cannot pass a drug screen.

With the county’s unemployment rate closing out 2019 at 3.1 percent, Greencastle/Putnam County Economic Development Center Director Kristin Clary told the Greencastle City Council earlier this month that anything under five percent is considered “really unemployable or at full employment.”

“So we’re constantly looking for new and innovative ways” to fill positions locally, she pointed out.

Regardless, local employment opportunities exist “with almost all of our distributors and our manufacturers,” Clary said.

The new Putnam jobless figure of 3.1 percent is good enough for a tie with Orange County for 55th best among Indiana’s 92 counties, according to unemployment figures released this week by the Indiana Department of Workforce Development.

For December, the Putnam figure remains better than all other contiguous counties with the exceptions of Hendricks, Morgan and Montgomery, all of which landed in the top 50. Hendricks County posted a 2.4 percent mark to tie for 11th best overall, while Morgan and Montgomery tied for 26th best at 2.7 percent.

Among the other contiguous counties, Owen, Parke and Clay all tumbled into the bottom 30 for the month.

Parke, at 3.8 percent, posted the 10th worst unemployment figure for December, while Owen, at 3.5 percent, was tied 16th worst overall. Clay County, at 3.2 percent, fared better in December and ended up in a seven-way tie for the 29th worst showing overall.

Putnam County did again post the best numbers of all the west-central Indiana counties in December, topping Vermillion (5.0 percent), Sullivan (4.2), Vigo (3.9 percent) and Greene (3.8) as well as the previously noted Clay, Parke and Owen.

Meanwhile, the 10 best Indiana jobless rates for December belong to the counties of Dubois, 2.0 percent; Tipton, Martin, Jackson, Hamilton, Boone and Bartholomew at 2.1; LaGrange, 2.2 percent; and Steuben and Rush, 2.3.

At the opposite end of the Hoosier unemployment spectrum, counties posting the worst jobless rates for December were Vermillion, 5.0; Lake, 4.9; Fayette 4.7; Crawford, LaPorte and Sullivan., 4.2; Starke, 4.0; Blackford and Vigo, 3.9 percent; Greene, Parke, Randolph and Newton, 3.8 percent.

An unemployment rate at 3.0 percent is the lowest Indiana has posted since December 2000. And it’s better than every neighboring state by nearly a full percentage point.

Indiana’s unemployment rate is lower than the national average of 3.5 percent and 16th nationwide, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. It’s the eighth highest out of the 12 U.S. Census Bureau-designated Midwestern states, trailing North Dakota, Iowa, Kansas, South Dakota, Minnesota, Missouri and Nebraska.

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