The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia is forecasting a lower Delaware unemployment rate for April.
The estimates are issued after the nation’s unemployment rate is released each month.
The April national jobless rate, released by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday, was 5.4 percent, down one-tenth of a percent from March.
Using an analytical method created by rank researchers, The bank expects unemployment rates for April to decrease from 4.6 percent to 4.4 percent in Delaware and remain unchanged at 5.3 percent and 6.5 percent in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, respectively.
The estimate is designed to fill the time gap between the release of the U.S. and state figures. State numbers are typically released around the 20th of the month, a couple of week after the federal figures.
The next state nowcast release will be on June 5, following the release of the May national employment report.
Delaware’s unemployment rate has fallen well below the national figures in the past several months.
However, the added employment has not translated into meaningfully higher tax revenues and the state continues to see shortfalls. A ban on non-essential out-of-state travel by state employees was recently issued.
By contrast, states ranging that include North Carolina, Minnesota and California are now seeing budget surpluses.
Delaware is seeing lower gaming revenues as other states and the painful dilemma of how to aid the industry without making its fiscal problems event worse.
The Delaware tax structure also has dependent on volatile unclaimed property revenues from entities incorporated in the state Strategies aimed at extracting those revenues have led to pushback from some corporations that have filed suit claiming estimates of unclaimed funds are wrong.
Other states in the Philadelphia Fed region are also facing fiscal challenges, with both New Jersey and Pennsylvania having massive funding gaps in their pension systems.
Delaware, through legislative action, has made changes to its system to make it more solvent.
