Louisiana jobless rate drops to 7% in September

Louisiana’s unemployment rate fell nearly half a percentage point to 7% in September, tying for the second-largest drop among all states, according to figures released today. That’s down from 7.4% in August. The drop was behind only South Carolina’s 0.5 percentage point improvement. Overall, jobless levels fell in 41 states, rose in six and were flat in three. Nevada retained the highest unemployment rate at 11.8 %, and North Dakota kept the lowest at 3%. September was the second month in a row the unemployment rate dropped in Louisiana, after no improvement since January, when joblessness hit a post-recession low of 6.9%. Louisiana had a 7.2% unemployment rate in September 2011. The number of unemployed Louisianans fell to 144,000 from 154,000 in August. In September 2011, the state had 148,000 unemployed people. Almost 6,000 more people said they had a job in September, while 4,000 left the labor force. It was the second-straight decline in the labor force after the number of workers and job seekers hit 2.08 million in June and July. Except for three volatile months after Hurricane Katrina, those two months saw the highest number of Louisianans ever in the labor market. The unemployment rate is calculated by a survey that asks how many people are looking for a job. Get more statistics in the full story here.