Southeast Mo.'s unemployment picture improving

Unemployment rates in Cape Girardeau County and throughout Southeast Missouri are improving, although they have not quite reached pre-pandemic levels.

According to data released Friday by the Missouri Department of Labor and Industrial Relations, Cape Girardeau County's jobless rate in January fell almost a full percentage point, from 5.2% in December to 4.3% in the first month of 2021. That despite a slight increase in the number of county residents filing initial unemployment claims -- 554 in January compared to 527 in December.

In early 2020, Cape Girardeau County's jobless rate was 3.5% in January and 3.2% in February before mushrooming to 9.5% in April during the first full month of the COVID-19 outbreak when hundreds of area businesses temporarily or permanently closed and sending more than 5,000 workers in the county to file for first-time jobless benefits.

By October and November of last year, Cape Girardeau County's unemployment rate had fallen to 3.3% before ticking upward to 5.2% in December.

Neighboring counties also experienced improvements in their jobless rates in January, according to the state labor department.

Bollinger County's unemployment rate in January was 5.0%, down from 5.8% in December. Meanwhile, Perry County checked in with a jobless rate of 4.1%, down slightly from December's 4.2%, while Scott County's unemployment rate in January was 4.9%, down from 5.8% the previous month.

Elsewhere in Southeast Missouri, the unemployment rates in all counties showed improvement in January, according to the state data.

January's jobless percentages in Southeast Missouri counties included:

• Butler -- 5.7%, down from 6.8%.
• Carter -- 7.0%, down from 7.2%.
• Dunklin -- 7.1%, down from 7.7%.
• Iron -- 7.0%, down from 7.4%.
• Madison -- 5.4%, down from 6.0%.
• Mississippi -- 5.6%, down from 6.1%.
• New Madrid -- 5.3%, down from 6.3%.
• Pemiscot -- 7.6%, down from 8.8%.
• Ripley -- 6.7%, down from 7.7%.
• St. Francois -- 5.9%, down from 6.3%.
• Ste. Genevieve -- 4.4%, down from 4.9%.
• Stoddard -- 5.4%, down from 6.2%.
• Wayne -- 5.9%, down from 6.9%.

Gentry County in northwest Missouri near the Iowa boarder, had the state's lowest unemployment rate in January, checking in at 3.1%. In nearby Carroll County, the unemployment rate dropped from a statewide high in December of 13.2% to 5.3% in January. Taney and Stone counties in southwest Missouri, both part of the Branson metropolitan statistical area, had the state's highest jobless rates in January, reported at 12.7% and 11.0%, respectively.

According to the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center (MERIC), Missouri's seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate in January was 4.3%, down a tenth from 4.4% in December and a full two points below the nation's 6.3% rate in January. The state's unemployment rate spiked at 12.5% in April.

Missouri's seasonally-adjusted non-farm payroll was just over 2.8 million in January, down nearly 125,000 from the number of non-farm workers in the state in January 2020. Most of those job losses (56,100) were in the leisure and hospitality sector, according to MERIC.

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