The Baton Rouge metro area saw a 6.7% unemployment rate among its civilian labor force in January 2021, according to not seasonally adjusted data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released today.
That was not only significantly higher than the 4.7% unemployment rate Baton Rouge reported in January 2020, before the COVID-19 pandemic triggered economic shutdowns throughout the U.S., but also above the 6.4% rate the metro saw just one month prior, in December 2020.
While Louisiana’s capital city was among 376 of the 389 metropolitan areas to see its unemployment rates rise in January from a year earlier, Baton Rouge’s unemployment rate in January fell slightly below the national average of 6.8%.Â
Baton Rouge’s civilian labor force has also diminished over the past year, from 422,518 in 2020 to 416,629 in the first month of 2021. It appears much of the employment decline took place in early January, as the labor force in December 2020 still totaled 422,409.
Meanwhile, the number of unemployed individuals has risen from 20,024 last year to 27,814 this year. Between December and January, an additional 989 people lost their jobs.
Nationally, El Centro, California, had the highest unemployment rate in January (16.5%), while Logan, Utah-Idaho, had the lowest rate (2.5%). The largest over-the-year unemployment rate increase in January occurred in Kahului-Wailuku-Lahaina, Hawaii (+11.8 percentage points).
