Wichita employment situation, June 2021

For the Wichita metropolitan area in June 2021, the number of unemployed persons is down, the unemployment rate is down, and the number of people working is up when compared to the same month one year ago. The recent trend is showing smaller changes.

Data released this week by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, part of the United States Department of Labor, shows a stable employment situation in the Wichita Metropolitan Statistical Area for June 2021.

Click charts and tables for larger versions.

Total nonfarm employment rose from 274,300 in June 2020 to 290,500 in June 2021, a gain of 16,200 jobs (5.9 percent). (This data is not seasonally adjusted, so month-to-month comparisons are not valid.) For the same period, employment in the nation rose by 5.8 percent. The unemployment rate in June 2021 was 5.8 percent, down from 9.9 percent the same month one year prior.

Considering seasonally adjusted data from the household survey, the labor force rose by 568 persons (0.2 percent) in June 2021 from May 2021, the number of unemployed persons rose by 475 (3.0 percent), and the unemployment rate was 5.1 percent, up from 5.1 percent in May. The number of employed persons not working on farms rose to 303,682 in June from 303,589 the prior month, an increase of 93 persons (0.0 percent).

To learn more about this data and what the employer and household surveys measure, see Visualization: Employment measures. Also, see Counting jobs in Wichita.

The following chart of the monthly change in the labor force and employment in Wichita shows both gains and declines. The rate of change is generally declining as the economy settles into a more stable pattern as the nation recovers from the pandemic.

Wichita has 5,179 fewer jobs (1.7 percent) than in the month before the start of the pandemic.

The following chart of changes from the same month one year ago shows Wichita now having more jobs than a year ago for the past three months. Those months were right after the start of the response to the pandemic.

The following chart of changes in employment from the same month of the previous year shows the Wichita MSA has mostly tracked the nation’s trend since the pandemic. Since November 2020, however, the recovery in Wichita has been notably slower than for the nation

The following chart shows the monthly change in nonfarm jobs for Wichita and the nation. Since September, the changes have been relatively small, with both gains and losses. The relatively large increase of 2,600 jobs in March was nearly canceled by the loss in April.

The following two charts show changes in jobs for Wichita and the nation over longer periods. The change is calculated from the same month of the previous year. For times when the Wichita line was above the nation, Wichita was growing faster than the nation. This was often the case during the decades starting in 1990 and 2000. Since 2010, however, Wichita has only occasionally outperformed the nation and sometimes has been far below the nation.