Indiana’s unemployment rate in May failed to drop for the first time in nine months, holding steady at 5.7-percent.
Indiana’s private sector added 48 hundred jobs last month, yet the unemployment rate remained unchanged.
The Department of Workforce Development says that’s because the state’s labor force increased, with about two thousand unemployed Hoosiers actively resuming the job hunt.
The state’s unemployment rate remains more than half a percent below the national average. And it’s dropped nearly two percent in just one year, with 46 thousand jobs added since May of 2013.
Governor Mike Pence says there are plenty of reasons to be encouraged about Indiana’s economy.
“We’ll finish this fiscal year with a hundred million dollars surplus, nearly $2 billion in reserves and that will continue to send a very, very strong message around the country about the fiscal strength of the state of Indiana,” Pence says.
Indiana’s rate is far below almost all of its neighboring states. Only Ohio sits lower at five and a half percent.
