West Virginia’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for the month of October dropped more than two percentage points to 6.4% and the number of 18,100 state residents found jobs.
October marked the sixth consecutive month of improving unemployment numbers in West Virginia. Plus, the state’s jobless rate was lower than that of the entire country which stood at 6.9% in October.
“Before the pandemic hit, we were churning out the best unemployment rates and total job numbers that West Virginia had seen in over a decade,” Gov. Jim Justice said in a statement. “There’s no doubt that the pandemic was like a cannonball to the stomach. But I’m encouraged to see that, month after month, our job numbers continue to improve and are trending back toward where they were before. But we won’t stop there, we want to continue to get better and better.”
Unemployment in Monongalia County was 4.1% last month, compared with 5.8% in September. Preston County, meanwhile, has a jobless rate of 4.4% last month, compared with 6.1% in September. Marion County’s jobless rate was 5.7%, down from 8% in the previous month.
“It’s definitely trending in the right direction,” said Russ Rogerson, president and CEO of the Morgantown Area Partnership. He credits WVU Medicine, Mon Health, and Mylan for keeping the local economy strong.
“It has bounced back in a good way,” said Rogerson, adding small businesses are still struggling in the current pandemic economy.
“We need to try and support them.”
In a recent report, John Deskins, West Virginia University’s director of Bureau of Business and Economic Research, said the state lost 94,000 jobs between February and April because of the pandemic. Since August, however, 57,000 of those jobs have been recovered as the economy opens back up.
Deskins described the recovery has v-shaped with rapid growth at first, then gradual, steady growth. Full recovery should occur by mid-2022.
Overall, unemployment rates in each of the state’s 55 counties fell in October. Pendleton County in the eastern part of the state was the lowest last month at 2.9%; Hampshire, 3.9%, and Grant and Morgan counties both at 4%.
At the opposite end, Mingo County at the very southern end of the state, had a rate of 11.3% followed by Calhoun at 10.5% and McDowell at 10.2%.
Deskins said while the numbers appear to be good news for the state, he said some time needs to pass before they can be viewed as legitimate.
“I will not place too much importance on one month of data during a period of unusually high volatility,” Deskins said in an email.
There is also the issue of labor force participation, he said. When the economy gets bad, some people lose their job and just give up looking for work altogether.
“They might just retire early, for example. So when an unemployed person just quits looking altogether, then that actually reduces the measured unemployment rate. This is called the ‘discouraged worker phenomenon.’ And we see this happening in both the state and the nation.”
“Also, West Virginia still has a low labor force participation rate, so the overall share of the adult population that is actually working in West Virginia is definitely less than the nation aside from the half-percentage-point difference in the labor force participation rate right now.”
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