Unemployment rate clears 3%

For the first time since June 2021, local unemployment climbed above 3% in January.

Jay County had an unemployment rate of 3.1% in January according to estimates Indiana Department of Workforce Development released Tuesday.

The rate was up 0.8 percentage points from December.

Local unemployment had been below 3% for 18 consecutive months since being at 3.3% in June 2021. It has not been above 4% since July 2020 when the state was coming down from the unemployment spike resulting from coronavirus pandemic shutdowns.

During a run of dramatically low unemployment, Jay County’s rate in December 2021 was just 1.1%. That was the lowest rate in at least 30 years.

Jay County’s rate in January was again close to the middle of the state rankings, tied for 38th-lowest along with Carroll, Huntington, Marion, Morgan, Ohio, Tipton and Union counties. (It was tied for 46th-lowest last month.)

The local rate was 0.3 percentage points lower than the Indiana average.

Hamilton, Gibson and Boone counties led the state with unemployment rates of 2.3%. Daviess County, which was lowest last month, came in at 2.4%.

Adams County was tied for fifth-lowest with Dubois and Hendricks counties at 2.5%.

LaGrange and Noble counties in northeast Indiana took over the highest rates in the state, coming in at 5.2%.

Steve Garbacz of The News Sun of Kendallville reported that while area economists took note of the big changes in those counties — LaGrange jumped up from 2.1% in December — there is no clear reason for the increases.

“The January labor market numbers show inconsistent performance across the northeast corner of the state, even across manufacturing-heavy locations,” director of Purdue University Fort Wayne Community Research Institute Rachel Blakeman told the newspaper. “Employers have spent two-plus years learning how to operate with reduced worker availability, so it will be interesting to see if these workers who are now searching for work find suitable employment quickly, i.e. they are snapped up by other employers, or if they find companies less willing to hire as the economy, especially at a national level, shows signs of weakness in the new year.”

Starke County was next at 5%, with Elkhart and Lake counties at 4.9%.

Area rates are as follows:

Adams County: 2.5%, up 0.8 percentage points, tie-fifth lowest

Blackford County: 3.8%, up 1.4 percentage points, tie-21st highest

Delaware County: 3.7%, up 1.3 percentage points, tie-25th highest

Jay County: 3.1%, up 0.8 percentage points, tie-38th lowest

Randolph County: 3.5%, up 1.2 percentage points, tie-34th highest

Wells County: 2.8%, up 1 percentage point, tie-14th lowest