Statewide Iowa — Iowa’s unemployment rate dropped a tenth of a percent in March. Last month’s two-point-eight percent unemployment rate is half a percent lower than it was a year ago.
The percentage of working-age Iowans who have a job or are actively looking for one increased to 68-point-two percent. Iowa Workforce Development director Beth Townsend says it’s a sign that people who quit a job or retired during the pandemic are returning to the labor market.
The retirement rate was higher than projected during the pandemic and Townsend says there is a combination of factors prompting recent retirees to return to the workforce.
Government records indicate 27 hundred workers started new jobs in March. Nursing and residential care facilities were responsible for most of the thousand or so jobs added in the healthcare sector.
Over the past three months, Iowa’s manufacturing sector has bounced back from what Townsend describes as a weak fourth quarter.
There were about a thousand job losses in Iowa’s transportation, warehousing, and utility industries. Townsend says that may be due to supply chain issues. The leisure and hospitality industries in Iowa have added more than 51 hundred jobs since last March as the sector continues to bounce back from pandemic closures.
