Staff Reports
The jobless rate for Bartholomew County, which was tied for second lowest in the state in December at 3.2 percent, rose in January and now ranks third.
Suburban Hamilton County north of Indianapolis maintained its rank as having the state’s lowest unemployment rate — at 3.5 percent, up from 3.1 percent in December and compared to 4.2 percent in January 2015.
That’s according to statistics released Tuesday by the Indiana Department of Workforce Development.
DuBois County, which includes the city of Jasper, again recorded the second-lowest rate in January with 3.7 percent, compared to 3.2 percent in December and 4.3 percent in January 2015.
Bartholomew in January was tied with three other Indiana counties with a 3.9 percent jobless rate, the same as in Elkhart, Hendricks and LaGrange counties. Bartholomew’s increase of 0.7 percentage points from December allowed those three counties to move into a four-way tie for third-lowest rate in Indiana.
The number of unemployed Bartholomew County residents increased by 229 between December and January, from 42,900 to 43,029. That was a period when Columbus-based Cummins Inc. completed a global workforce reduction, which also impacted local residents.
The January jobless rate in Indiana was 5.1 percent, up from 4.5 percent in December and down from 6.1 percent in January 2015.
The United States unemployment rate was 5.3 percent in January, up from 4.8 percent in December and down from 6.1 percent a year ago January.
