(Charts courtesy of the Delaware Department of Labor)
Delaware’s unemployment rate jumped a couple of tenths of a percentage point between September and October to 5.1 percent, with state labor market officials taking pains to claim that the uptick was not evidence of an economic slowdown.
The U.S. rate was 5 percent, a figure that marked a milestone of sorts for Delaware, which in the past couple of decades has seen jobless rates well below the national average.
The higher rate had been predicted earlier in the month by the Nowcast report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
Over the past year, the state’s jobless rate fell by seven-tenths of one percent, only to rise by sixth-tenths of a percent to slighly more than five percent.
In October of last year, the nation’s unemployment rate was 5.7 percent, with Delaware at 5.4 percent.
At the same time, however, labor market officials noted that total employment was up by 10,700 jobs.
The apparent contradiction is due to more people entering in labor market in Delaware, the report from the Delaware Department of Labor noted. By contrast, workforce participation is declining nationwide as some people retire and others simply stop looking for work.
The workforce participation rate in the state was 64.7 percent in October. up from 61.3 percent a year ago.
George Sharply, who heads, of the Office of Occupational and Labor Market Information at the Delaware Department of Labor, said no reason for the uptick in workforce participation is apparent from existing data. One possibility is that overall optimism about hiring has improved to the point that many are now looking for work.
Jobless rates are also subject to revision.
For example, Delaware, for a time, ranked as one of the top-performing states in terms of job growth about a year ago.
The latest figures show job growth running about 1 percent, well below the 1.9 percent national rate.
Most job categories are up over the past year, the one big exception being wholesale and retail trade.
Sharpley said federal estimates of job losses in retail and wholesale trade do not match up with payroll data that actually shows small gains in that sector of the economy.
The performance of the economy and the unemployment rate are expected to be hot topics as Delaware and other states go into the presidential and gubernatorial election year of 2016.
The discussions often turn to a mismatch between jobs and skills, with technology companies and operations scrambling to find workers with coding and other specialized skills.
