Missouri's employment, seasonally adjusted, increased by 13,000 jobs in September over the previous month, and over-the-year job losses from COVID-19 shutdowns dropped below 125,000, according to a news release from the Missouri Economic Research & Information Center.
The state's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate decreased to 4.9 percent in September from an August rate of 7 percent.
The national unemployment rate was 7.9 percent in September 2020.
The estimated number of unemployed Missourians was 146,051 in September 2020, down by 68,345 from August's 214,396. The over-the-month drop is due in part to the unemployed workers exhausting their unemployment insurance benefits and leaving the labor market, according to MERIC. The change contributed to the 2.3 percent decline in Missouri's total civilian labor force over the month.
Due to lingering layoffs from COVID-19 shutdowns, the September 2020 rate remained nearly 50 percent higher than the September 2019 rate. The rate was 3.4 percent in October 2019, where it remained for the remainder of 2019, and was steady at 3.5 percent in January and February 2020 before the COVID-19 spike began in March 2020.
Missouri's unemployment rate peaked at 10.2 percent in April 2020 before decreasing slightly in May 2020, then moving lower in June and July of 2020 as COVID-19 restrictions eased.
The state's not-seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate was 4.3 percent in September, down from the August not-seasonally-adjusted rate of 7.1 percent.
The not-seasonally-adjusted national rate for September was 7.7 percent.
A year ago, the state's seasonally adjusted rate was 3.3 percent, and the not-adjusted rate was 2.7 percent.
Missouri's full September jobs report is available online at meric.mo.gov/missouri-monthly-jobs-report.