Cape Girardeau County jobless rate up in October, while state and U.S. rates decline

The unemployment rate in Cape Girardeau County inched up three-tenths of 1% in October, from September's 2.2% to last month's 2.5% with 130 people filing new initial jobless claims, down from September's 144.

The county-by-county out-of-work numbers, released Friday by the Missouri Department of Labor and Industrial Relations, lag the release of the U.S. rate by a full month.

In November, the nation's jobless rate in November fell 0.4% to 4.2%, the sixth consecutive month of decline. In June, the unemployment rate stood at 5.9%.

The fly in the ointment is while U.S. unemployment numbers continued to fall, only 210,000 new jobs were added in November — well below economists' prediction of 550,000.

The State of Missouri's jobless rate is also a month behind as October clocked in at 3.7%, down slightly from September's 3.8%.

The highest October county unemployment rate found in Missouri was in Pemiscot, as the Bootheel county registered 4.7% as jobless.

Other county data in October

• Bollinger: up 0.3 to 2.5%.
• Perry: up 0.2 to 2.1%.
• Scott: up 0.2 to 2.6%.
• Stoddard: up 0.2 to 2.9%.
• Wayne: up 0.4 to 3.5%.
• New Madrid: up 0.2 to 3.2%.
• Mississippi: up 0.2 to 3.1%.
• Madison: up 0.1 to 2.9%.
• Dunklin: up 0.2 to 3.9%.
• Butler: up 0.3 to 3.1%.

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