Unemployment in the seven-county region is seeing an increase in numbers in the Jan. 24 report from the month prior, and a mixed between going up and down from a year ago. The Jan. 2024 unemployment rate for the state average at 3.0%, with the listening region having a range of the highest at 6.3% to the lowest of 2.5%. Carroll County had an unemployment rate of 2.5%, which is .7 points increase from December 2023 and .2 points increase from a year ago. Greene County saw a similar pattern to Carroll’s, with a 2.5% rate in January ‘24, .8 points increase from the previous month of December and .1 points increase from the previous year. Sac and Calhoun County both saw a rate of 3.1% for January 2024, with Sac seeing an increase of 1.1 points from December 2023, but .2 points decrease from Jan 2023. However, Calhoun saw a rise in both numbers with .9 points increase on the month and .4 points from a year ago. Crawford county increased .7 from the December report but a decrease of .6 points from January ‘23 to see a rate of 6.3% for January ‘24. Audubon County saw a rise in unemployment numbers to 2.9%, up 1.0 points from December 2023 and .3 point from the previous year. Guthrie County saw the highest jump in unemployment rates on the month, 1.5 points increase to 4.2%, but that number is still down from the previous year by .1 points. The average unemployment rate for the region is at 3.5%, which is an increase of .9 points on the month and rising 1.1 points above the rate of a year ago. Iowa remains below the U.S average of 4.1%. A link to the to the Iowa Workforce Development data is included below.
