Statewide Iowa (RI/KIWA) — Iowa’s unemployment rate for March was the same as it was in February — three-point-seven percent.
The number of Iowans receiving unemployment benefits increased slightly in March, just as the total number of people working in Iowa grew by about 32-hundred. According to Iowa Workforce Development, the state’s hospitality industry has hired four thousand people since December, mostly for work in restaurants and hotels.
The county-by-county numbers are a month behind, as usual. The unemployment in northwest Iowa remains the lowest in the state. Lyon and Osceola counties had the lowest and second-lowest February unemployment rates in the state, respectively. Lyon’s was 2.6 percent, and Osceola’s was 2.7 percent. Sioux was only two clicks higher at 2.9 percent and O’Brien County was only two clicks higher than that at 3.1 percent. The highest unemployment in the state for February was in Marshall County with 8.2 percent unemployment.
