Wyoming Jobless Rate Down Slightly Last Month
Wyoming's unemployment rate dropped from 4.3 percent in November to 4.2 percent last month, according to a new report from the Research and Planning section of the Wyoming Department of Workforce Services.
Even with the decline, the state jobless rate is still slightly above the national unemployment rate of 4.1 percent. Senior Economist David Bullard called the .01 drop ''not statistically significant."
Year-over-year, Wyoming's unemployment rate is down significantly from the December 2016 rate of 4.8 percent. But Bullard says that news is not nearly as good as it seems because the state labor force also declined by 2.8 percent (8,569 people) over that same period.
He says those numbers show that a lot of people have left the state, or at least quit looking for work, between December 2016 and last month. The total number of people working in nonfarm jobs Wyoming did increase by 600 over that year-long period.
Bullard says that isn't a statistically significant increase at 0.2 percent