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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowIndiana’s unemployment rate reached 8.2 percent in December – the highest it has been since President Ronald Reagan began his second term in office.
The state’s rate in December shot up 1.1 percentage points, pushing the figure to its highest point since February 1985, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Indiana has the dubious distinction of joining South Carolina as the only state in the nation to log such a large increase.
“This is big; that’s a huge jump,” said Philip Powell, an associate professor of business economics at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business.
Indiana’s jobless rate grew from 7.1 percent in November and is now a whopping 3.6 percentage points higher than the 4.6 percent rate recorded in December 2007. The state lost nearly 39,000 jobs last month, roughly three times more than it did in November. Among its peers in the Midwest, only Michigan’s 10.6 percent jobless rate is worse.
“Today’s report underscores the news we have heard across the nation about the current state of the economy,” Department of Workforce Development Commissioner Teresa Voors said in a statement.
Job losses in the manufacturing, construction and retail sectors particularly contributed to the state’s rise in unemployment, she said.
“Our economy is the most manufacturing-dependent in the country,” Powell said. “When the automotive and manufacturing sector gets hit, we’re going to feel a very cold wind.”
Indeed, the ranks of the state’s unemployed are expected to swell even larger. So far this month Indiana employers notified the state of upcoming plant closings and layoffs that will eliminate more than 1,000 Hoosier jobs.
And just today, Navistar International Corp. said it will close its Indianapolis engine plant and adjacent Indianapolis Casting Corp. foundry effective July 31, putting 700 more people out of work.
The state’s December jobless rate outpaced the nation as a whole. Nationally, unemployment rose in December to 7.2 percent from 6.8 percent the previous month, and is up 2.3 percentage points from a year earlier. All 50 states and the District of Columbia reported unemployment increases.
Still, major U.S. companies continue to shed jobs at an alarming rate. At least four announced plans yesterday to eliminate a total of more than 40,000 positions.
In December, the number of unemployed nationally increased by 632,000 to 11.1 million. Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the number of jobless has grown by 3.6 million, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
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