Good news for Tennessee! The unemployment rate of Tennessee declined slightly by a point. It is now 10.5 percent. The actual count of the unemployed is about 318,000, the lowest point since a year. Even then, the experts say that the unemployment rate did not decline a lot because the number of people looking for work in the labor force has increased.
According to statistics, the number of positions in administrative and support have increased by 9,000. Education and health services have seen a gain of more than 8,000 jobs. But there have been job losses in construction and durable goods manufacturing sectors.
The state’s biggest job gains came from leisure and hospitality, mining and construction, trade, transportation and utilities.
Due to job losses, the people who have been claiming unemployment benefits are more. Even though Congress is ready to extend the eligibility date of extra unemployment benefits for other workers that were set to phase out at the end of this month. This would actually enable the workers to stay on the claims for about 99 weeks. But it would not be of any help to many of them in Tennessee.
According to news reports, Tennessee approximately 15,000 workers have exhausted all their unemployment benefits, with an estimated 1,850 getting their last check next week and a similar number each week thereafter.
On Thursday the state announced that April unemployment in Tennessee was 10.5 percent, just a slight dip from the previous month’s 10.6 percent rate.
The one bright thing is that more and more people are entering the labor force now as the economy shows signs of recovery.
If you want to know more about the unemployment claims in the state, then you can refer the unemployment benefits guide.