If having a job is something to be thankful for, Golden Triangle residents have much to celebrate Thursday, based on the latest jobless figures released Tuesday by the Mississippi Department of Employment Security.
Unemployment rates in Lowndes and Oktibbeha counties in September are the lowest they have been since April 2001, while Noxubee County’s jobless rate is the lowest monthly rate recorded dating to 1990.
That trend follows the state rate, whose seasonally-adjusted rate for September and May of this year are the lowest monthly rates since seasonally-adjusted data was first compiled in 1976.
Seasonally-adjusted data removes the effects of events that follow a more or less regular pattern each year such as the influences of weather, holidays, the opening and closing of schools and other recurring seasonal events. These adjustments make it easier to observe the cyclical and other non-seasonal movements in a data series. Amounts are seasonally adjusted at the National and State levels only.
Unemployment rates in Lowndes and Oktibbeha counties in September were 1.1 percent lower than in September 2016, while those rates dropped by 1.5 percent over the same period of time in Clay and Noxubee counties.
The number of unemployed Mississippians fell in the month by 3,500 to 62,500. In October 2017, fewer Mississippians were unemployed than at any time since October 1979. In October 2017, there were 2,100 more jobs in Mississippi than in September 2017, and 6,500 more than October 2016, according to the seasonally adjusted results from a survey of Mississippi employers.
The last time there were more than the current 1,153,600 jobs in Mississippi was May 2008.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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