Delaware’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in November was up a tick from the previous month.
The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 4.4% in November up from 4.3% in October, but still down from last November when it was 4.8%.
The Department of Labor’s Tom Dougherty says Delaware’s unemployment rate has nestled in a certain range since the height of the pandemic.
“Delaware's unemployment rate a year ago was 4.8%. It has gone down as low as 4.3, and has kind of hovered in between that range for the past year and currently we're at 4.4,” said Dougherty.
Delaware’s number still lags behind the national jobless rate - which was 3.7% last month.
The non-seasonally adjusted area unemployment numbers were all down with the exception of Sussex County.
As for seasonally adjusted nonfarm employment, those numbers were down - sitting at 462,600 in November compared to 463,500 in October, but there’s a net gain of 9,800 in the last year.
Those numbers also lag behind the national numbers - there’s been a 3.2% increase in jobs nationally compared to a 2.2% increase in Delaware.
The biggest culprit was the Leisure and Hospitality industry which lost 1,700 jobs in November from October.
Dougherty says while Delaware’s numbers trail the national trend, he believes Delaware will see an uptick with revisions.
"I think Delaware's numbers - jobs numbers - that we reported in the current employment statistics numbers, those numbers I think they're a little bit low. If we look at our payroll data from the quarterly census of employment wages that's growing something on the order of three and a half percent. So, I think when we do our revisions, we're going to have an upward revision in our jobs numbers I suspect," said Dougherty.
Dougherty notes those revisions will show up early next year, most likely in March.
