The eight-county Western Iowa Advantage Region has seen unemployment rates mostly holding steady, with the exception of Crawford County, which is actually seeing a decrease in numbers for the first time in many months after the unexpected closure of the Tyson plant drove rates up in August of 2015. Iowa Workforce Development tracks rates on a monthly basis and provides comparisons to the same time periods last year. According to their most recent release for June, overall unemployment decreased to 3 percent, down from 3.8 percent in June of 2016. This coincides with a drop in Iowa’s rate for the same time period, form 3.2 percent in 2017 from 4 percent in 2016. In the Western Iowa Advantage region, Ida County had the lowest recorded unemployment rate for June at 2.3 percent with Carroll and Sac coming in a close second, both recording 2.5 percent. Adair was slightly higher at 2.6 percent, while the remainder of the counties ranked in the threes, with Audubon at 3.1, Greene at 3.2, Guthrie at 3.4 and Crawford at 3.8 percent.
