The jobless rate in Bartholomew County stood at 3.4% in September, down from 3.8% in September 2024, according to the most recent data from the Indiana Department of Workforce Development.
Unemployment was flat at 3.2% in Jackson County and declined from 3.5% to 3.3% in Jennings County over the same period.
Statewide, the unemployment rate was a seasonally adjusted 3.7% in September, down from 4.4% a year earlier. The U.S. jobless rate was a seasonally adjusted 4.4% last month, up from 4.1% in September 2024.
The update from state officials came as the federal government reported that United States gained 64,000 jobs in November but lost 105,000 in October as federal workers departed after cutbacks by the Trump administration, the government said in delayed reports, The Associated Press reported.
The unemployment rate rose to 4.6% in October, highest since 2021.
The November job gains were higher than the 40,000 economists had forecast, according to wire reports. The October job losses were caused by a 162,000 drop in federal workers, many of whom resigned at the end of fiscal year 2025 on Sept. 30 under pressure from billionaire Elon Musk’s purge of U.S. government payrolls.
Labor Department revisions also knocked 33,000 jobs off August and September payrolls.
Hiring has clearly lost momentum, hobbled by uncertainty over President Donald Trump’s tariffs and the lingering effects of the high interest rates the Fed engineered in 2022 and 2023 to rein in an outburst of inflation, according to wire reports. Since March, job creation has fallen to an average 35,000 a month, compared to 71,000 in the year ended in March.
Both the October and November job creation numbers, released last week by the Labor Department, came in late because of the 43-day federal government shutdown. Those delays have made deliberations more difficult at the Federal Reserve, where policymakers are divided over whether the labor market needs more help from lower interest rates.
The unemployment rate, though still modest by historical standards, has risen since bottoming out at a 54-year low of 3.4% in April 2023, according to the AP. It rose from 4.4% in September, and the number of people in the labor force – those working or looking for work – increased 323,000 from September. A rate for October was not available because of the shutdown.
The latest jobs figures could decline in the coming months, according to wire reports. Last week, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said that the central bank thinks that hiring has been overcounted by about 60,000 jobs a month since spring. “You can say that the labor market has continued to cool gradually, maybe just a touch more gradually than we thought,” Powell said at a recent news conference.
