From The Tribune staff reports
MONTGOMERY — Alabama’s unemployment rate is up substantially to 3.5%, Alabama Department of Labor Secretary Fitzgerald Washington said Friday, and it will go even higher because of the coronavirus outbreak.
Monthly losses were seen in the education and health services sector (-4,300), the professional and business services sector (-2,100), and the leisure and hospitality sector (-900), among others.
While the spike in joblessness was bad, the report noted that the full impact of the COVID-19 shutdown wasn’t included since most closings and layoff happened during the week of March 16, after statistics were gathered. That means the April numbers will be worse.
The March jobless rate reflected a loss of more than 24,000 jobs as efforts to stop the spread of the virus were taking hold.
Shelby County in metro Birmingham, which typically has the state’s lowest unemployment rate, was still lowest at 2.5%. But joblessness increased to 9.6% in Wilcox County, located in rural western Alabama.