Only one county in Tennessee experienced an increase in its unemployment rate in April.
Unicoi County’s jobless rate went from 4.7 percent to 4.9 percent.
The county with fewer than 20,000 residents has seen its unemployment rate increase by 1 percent since September 2024, when it was 3.9 percent.
Tennessee’s overall unemployment rate was 3.5 percent in April, the second consecutive month it dropped. The Volunteer State is tied with Maine and Iowa for America’s 16th-lowest unemployment rate.
In April, the counties with the lowest unemployment rates were Williamson, Rutherford, Wilson, Cheatham, Knox, and Robertson. All these counties have a jobless rate of 2.4 percent or below.
Williamson County had a jobless rate of 2.2 percent, which was the lowest in the state.
Conversely, the counties with the highest unemployment rates were Johnson, Unicoi, Hardeman, Cocke, Pickett, and Lake. All of them had jobless rates of 4.3 percent or above.
Johnson County had the highest unemployment rate at 5.1 percent. This is the only Tennessee county with an unemployment rate above 5 percent.
Pickett County witnessed the highest drop in a Tennessee county’s unemployment rate. Its jobless rate went down 1.3 percent.
Some of Tennessee’s biggest population hubs, such as Nashville, Memphis, and Knoxville, experienced declining unemployment rates.
Memphis’ jobless rate dropped by 0.7 percent, while Nashville and Knoxville saw their rates decrease by 0.3 percent.
All three of these cities have over 100,000 people in their workforce.
Despite these cities’ drop in unemployment rates, they are not lower than those in April 2024. Memphis and Nashville have a higher jobless rate than last April, while Knoxville has the same rate.
Furthermore, while Memphis’ unemployment rate dropped in April, it remained the highest for a city in Tennessee at 4.1 percent.
Franklin had the lowest jobless rate at 2.1 percent for a city.
Cities in Tennessee have a population of more than 25,000.
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Zachery Schmidt is the digital editor of The Star News Network. Email tips to Zachery at [email protected].
