Local jobless rate hits high note in latest rankings

The latest Putnam County jobless rate is singing a new tune -- as a top 40 hit.

After languishing in the bottom half of the Indiana unemployment rankings for much of the past two years, the Putnam County jobless rate has steadily rebounded during the fall and winter, reaching a high-water mark of 35th best (3.5 percent) for September.

The latest Putnam unemployment rate of 3.0 percent, meanwhile, is good enough for a tied for 40th best among Indiana’s 92 counties with Clark, Howard, Jay, Warren and White counties according to new Indiana Department of Workforce Development figures.

For December, the Putnam County figure also remains better than all contiguous counties with the exception of Hendricks and Montgomery counties, both of which landed in the

top 20. Hendricks County posted a 2.5 percent mark to tie for 11th best overall, while Montgomery earned in a tie for 20th best overall with a 2.6 percent jobless mark for the month.

Among the other contiguous counties, Morgan County was in a tie for 46th best at 3.1 percent, while Clay County, at 3.2 percent, was in a tie for 53rd spot for December. Parke County, at 3.6 percent, was tied for 72nd, while Owen County was ranked 11th worst among the 92 counties at 3.8 percent.

Putnam County also posted the best December numbers of all west-central Indiana counties, topping Vigo (3.7 percent), Greene (4.0), Sullivan (4.2) and Vermillion (4.9) in addition to the aforementioned Clay, Parke and Owen.

The top 10 Hoosier jobless rates for December belong to the counties of LaGrange, 2.0; Elkhart, 2.1; Adams and Dubois, 2.2; Kosciusko, Steuben, Bartholomew and Hamilton, 2.3; and DeKalb and Boone tied for 10th at 2.84 percent.

At the opposite end of the Hoosier unemployment spectrum, counties posting the worst Indiana jobless rates for December were: Vermillion, 4.9 percent; Lake, 4.8; Crawford, 4.6; Newton and Fayette, 4.3; LaPorte and Sullivan, 4.2 percent; Starke, 4.1 percent; Greene, 4.0; and Lawrence, 3.9.

Indiana’s unemployment rate stands at 3.4 percent for December 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 more than four 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 14,195 over the previous month. This was a result of 10,696 unemployed residents no longer seeking employment within the past four weeks, and a 3,499 decrease in residents employed. Indiana’s total labor force, which includes both Hoosiers employed and those seeking employment, stands at 3.3 million, and the state’s 63.6 percent labor force participation rate remains above the national rate of 62.7 percent.