Indiana’s unemployment rate rises slightly

Indiana’s unemployment rate ticked up in June to 10.1 percent—the third consecutive month the rate has been in double digits, the Indiana Department of Workforce Development announced Tuesday morning.

The rate had been 10 percent in both April and May.

Before April, Indiana’s revised seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate had teetered between 9.7 percent and 9.9 percent for six months, after topping 10 percent from March through September of 2009.

The number of permanent jobs in Indiana actually rose by 3,600 in June. But the loss of temporary professional and business-services jobs resulted in total private-sector employment dropping by 1,100.

“Indiana’s economy added thousands of jobs in retail, manufacturing and finance, but those gains did not overcome a drop in hiring by temporary-staffing companies,” DWD Commissioner Mark W. Everson said in a prepared statement.

Sectors reporting job growth included trade, transportation and utilities; manufacturing; and financial activities. Sectors reporting declines included leisure and hospitality, construction, and government, largely due to the loss of temporary U.S. census workers.

For months, Indiana’s jobless rate had been the lowest in the Midwest. But the slight increase to 10.1 percent enabled Kentucky, at 10 percent, to overtake the Hoosier state. Kentucky’s jobless rate fell by 0.4 percentage points from May.

Michigan’s 13.2-percent unemployment rate was tops in the Midwest in June, followed by Ohio at 10.5 percent and Illinois at 10.4 percent.

Every state in the Midwest except Indiana registered a drop in its unemployment rate in June.

The national unemployment rate is 9.5 percent.

The number of unemployed Hoosiers increased, to 320,741 in June, from a revised 306,503 in May.

In the Indianapolis metro area, the non-seasonally adjusted jobless rate was 9.3 percent in June, up from 8.9 percent in June 2009.