See The Unemployment Rate Michigan As Labor Day Nears

MICHIGAN – As the upcoming Labor Day holiday celebrates workers in Michigan and across America, many are still unemployed even as the coronavirus pandemic approaches its year and a half mark.

Michigan’s unemployment rate was 4.8 in June, according to the latest federal figures from the US Bureau of Labor and Statistics.

Nationwide, the unemployment rate fell by 0.5 percentage points to 5.4 percent in July, as the latest job report from the employment office shows. About 8.7 million Americans were unemployed that month, much more than the 5.7 million unemployed in February 2020.

“There have been notable job increases in the leisure and hospitality sectors, community education, and professional and business services,” the office wrote in its report.

The employment report for August will likely be available in the second week of September.

Unemployment in Michigan is still higher than it was in the days before the pandemic. According to the employment office, the annual unemployment rate for the state’s labor force was 4.1 in 2019.

See also: Labor shortage brings new hiring tactics

The national unemployment rate nearly tripled from the summers of 2019 to 2020, a clear result of closings related to the pandemic. According to the employment office, the rate rose from 3.7 percent to 10.2 percent from July 2019 to July 2020.

The July 2021 numbers show that unemployment across the country has fallen by almost half year-over-year, although further job growth may be at risk due to the recent surge in delta variant coronavirus cases.

Comments are closed.