Statewide Iowa — The January labor numbers are in and they show unemployment dropped to three percent in the month compared to three-point-one percent for December.
Iowa Workforce Development spokesman, Jesse Dougherty, says there’s another more important number.
The labor force is the number of people working and those who are actively looking for work.
The January numbers are just being released now because the Bureau of Labor Statistics first did its annual review of the previous year’s numbers.
Dougherty says the job picture continued to get better as the state recovered from the pandemic.
Dougherty says the growth has been widespread.
Dougherty says the labor force participation rate before the pandemic was in the 69 to 70 percent range, so to see it surpass 68 percent is significant.
