Wichita unemployment rate falls

For April 2018, the unemployment rate in the Wichita metropolitan area fell, and the number of jobs grew.

Today the Bureau of Labor Statistics released employment statistics for metropolitan areas through April 2018. These are numbers that are not seasonally adjusted, so it’s not very useful to compare any month with the month before. But it is appropriate to compare a month with the same month of the prior year.

The good news, sort of: The unemployment rate for the Wichita metro area declined to 3.6 percent in April 2018, down from 3.9 percent in April 2017. The number of unemployed persons also declined by 8.9 percent for the same period.

These numbers should be good news. But these two statistics don’t exist in a vacuum. Specifically, the unemployment rate is the ratio of the number of unemployed persons to the labor force. While the number of unemployed persons fell, so too did the labor force. It declined by 2,676 persons over the year, while the number of unemployed persons fell by 1,071. This produces a lower unemployment rate, but a shrinking labor force is not the sign of a healthy economy.

A further indication of the health of the Wichita MSA economy is the number of nonfarm jobs. This rose by 100 from April 2017 to April 2018, an increase of 0.03 percent. This follows a decline of 0.5 percent from March 2017 to March 2018.

For April 2018, BLS reports:

Unemployment rates were lower in April than a year earlier in 305 of the 388 metropolitan areas, higher in 63 areas, and unchanged in 20 areas, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Eighty-eight areas had jobless rates of less than 3.0 percent and three areas had rates of at least 10.0 percent. Nonfarm payroll employment increased over the year in 312 metropolitan areas, decreased in 70 areas, and was unchanged in 6 areas. The national unemployment rate in April was 3.7 percent, not seasonally adjusted, down from 4.1 percent a year earlier. ¹

Sources:
Bureau of Labor Statistics. Table 1. Civilian labor force and unemployment by state and metropolitan area, not seasonally adjusted. Available at https://www.bls.gov/news.release/metro.t01.htm.
Bureau of Labor Statistics. Table 3. Employees on nonfarm payrolls by state and metropolitan area, not seasonally adjusted. Available at https://www.bls.gov/news.release/metro.t03.htm.

—
Notes