Delaware’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in August was 4.1%, unchanged from July, the Delaware Department of Labor reported.
The jobs report came with mixed indicators – a growing labor force and an incease in the number of people unemployed..
Delaware’s August unemployment rate is higher than the nation’s unemployment rate by 0.3 percentage points.
The gap is the smallest since August 2021 when the US unemployment rate was 5.2 percent and Delaware’s rate was 5.5 percent.
Delaware has seen a slower recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic than the nation as a whole.
Over-the month, both Delaware’s number of employed workers and its labor force level grew by 0.5 percent.
The growth in the labor force from July to August is the largest over-the-month increase since the addition of 3,000 workers in November 2020. The number of unemployed Delawareans also rose, increasing by 200, the first over-the-month increase in unemployed workers since November 2022.
The Labor Department reported 20,800 unemployed Delawareans in August 2023 compared to 22,100 in August 2022.
The nation’s unemployment rate was 3.8% in August 2023, up from 3.5% in July 2023. In August 2022, the U.S. unemployment rate was 3.7%, while Delaware’s rate was 4.5%.
Leisure and hospitality continued to see the strongest growth with that category accounting for more than half of state’s job growth in the past year. (See chart)
In August 2023, seasonally adjusted nonfarm employment was 482,900, down from 483,300 in July 2023.
Since August 2022, Delaware’s total nonfarm jobs have increased by a net gain of 9,800, an increase of 2.1%. Nationally, jobs during that period increased by 2%.
The full employment report is below.
