On October 3, the Federal Department of Labor released its latest national jobs report, which showed good and bad news for the nation’s workforce.
The good news is the national unemployment rate is under 6 percent for the first time since July of 2008. The bad news? The labor force continues to shed workers.
The unemployment rate fell from 6.1 percent in August to 5.9 percent in September.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics report, 248,000 jobs were added during the month of September, marking yet another month of job growth. At the same time though, nearly 100,000 workers left the labor force, another continuing trend at the national level.
The national economy still has a long way to go to get back to where it was prior to the 2007-08 recession.
In May of 2007, unemployment reached a low of 4.4 percent, following the recession of 2001. This current rate remains far higher than the beginning of the recession, and much higher than Iowa’s current unemployment rate of 4.5 percent.
Additionally, the labor force in Iowa continues to grow with more and more Iowans looking for, and finding, high-quality, good-paying jobs.