Missouri Jobless Numbers Remain Flat in May
06.15.11 | By: Tim Sampson
Missouri unemployment remained relatively unchanged in May, although the full impact of the disaster in southwest Missouri was not part of the equation.
The state employment rate remained at 8.9 per cent, despite a loss of 1,500 jobs, accord ing the Department of Economic Development. Those numbers put Missouri just under the national unemploy ment rate of 9.1 percent.
So far this year, Missouri has seen a net gain of 18,000 jobs. If the trend continues, this would be the second year in a row that Missouri has added jobs follow ing two years of decline in the wake of the national recession, said John Fougere, a spokesperson for the Department of Economic Development.
“Last year was a year where we finally turned a corner and had our first year since 2007 where we finished the year with a net gain of jobs – about 1,000 jobs,” Fougere said.
One of the strongest sectors of Missouri’s job market has been manufacturing, according to Fougere, who credited last year’s economic incentive package for the Ford Motor Company as a key component. He said the legislative deal that encouraged Ford to expand its plant at Claycomo has had a ripple effect on auto manufacturing through out the state, saving about 11,000 jobs.
Missouri has consistently ranked lower in unemployment than most other states. In 14 out of the last 16 months, the state unemployment rate has been lower than the national average, said Fougere. A key component in that has been the stability of Missouri’s housing market.
“The housing market is what really plagued a lot of states that suffered the worst,” he said. “California, Florida and Nevada: they had kind of a boom or bust cycle when it came to the housing market. In Missouri we didn’t quite have those extremes.”
As for last month’s flat job growth, the recent scourge of natural disasters could be to blame. Data used to calculate the May unemployment rate was taken during the second week of the month, at the height of flooding in the south eastern corner of the state, which Fougere said had an impact. Before that, the other slowest month this year for job growth was February. During that month, data collection coincided with the record-setting blizzard that blanketed most of the state with two feet of snow.
The Joplin tornado though was not taken into account when determining May unemployment. The tornado destroyed thousands of homes and businesses throughout Joplin, including the St. John’s Hospital, which employed about 1,700 area residents. Fougere said the economic impact of the storm will likely make itself known in June’s unemployment statistics.
“As we look at the numbers for June, certainly we’ll be looking closely to see what effect that does have,” he said. “We would expect that it would have an impact on southwest Missouri.”
