St. Louis unemployment drops to 30-month low
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
August 3, 2011
By Steve Giegerich
Unemployment in metropolitan St. Louis dipped to a seasonally adjusted 8.8 percent in June, marking the first time in 30 months the area jobless rate has registered below 9 percent.
St. Louis was one of 224 regions, among the 372 surveyed each month by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, registering job growth compared to the previous June.
The BLS survey puts local unemployment in June a 9 percent. That figure is not adjusted for seasonal work. The Post-Dispatch bases its seasonally-adjusted area jobless figures on data provided by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
St. Louis unemployment stood at 9 percent in May after the Federal Reserve crunched the numbers.
The local unemployment numbers do not include the underemployed, residents employed involuntarily in part-time positions or displaced workers who have stopped looking for jobs.
Nationally, the jobless rate rises to over 16 percent when people in those categories are added to the equation.
And as Post-Dispatch business writer Tim Logan points out, the Federal Reserve data shows there are 23,000 fewer people in the local workforce today than there were the last time the region had a jobless rate below 9 percent -- January, 2009.
The U.S. unemployment in June, based on displaced workers currently in the job market, stood at 9.2 percent.
The ADP Employment Report is forecasting a one-month increase of 114,000 jobs when the government releases the July jobless report Friday morning.
Statewide, Missouri had an unemployment rate of 8.8 percent in June, while the llinois rate showed a slight increase to 9.2 percent.
