Vermont’s unemployment rate increased slightly to 4.4 percent in June.
Despite the 0.3 percent rise in June over May’s figure of 4.1 percent, which the state Labor Department said is statistically significant, Vermont still claims the lowest unemployment rate in New England and the fourth-lowest in the country. The national rate is 7.6 percent.
“A review of last year’s initial data shows a similar rise during the months of May and June,” the Labor Department said in a news release. A year ago, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 5.1 percent.
Not accounting for seasonal adjustments, the number of unemployed in Vermont is about 17,150, or 4.8 percent of the population. Locally, that ranges from 3.2 percent in the Hartford area to 6.6 percent in Newport. At 4.2 percent, Burlington and South Burlington’s unemployment numbers are below the state average.
A closer look
Since May, about 600 jobs were shed in education and health services, the state’s largest employment sector with an estimated 61,500 positions.
Construction jobs declined by about 400 jobs since May. It’s one of the few sectors performing worse this June than it did last year, when the employment rate in that sector was about 4.3 percent higher.
Retail trade and one portion of the transportation sector also have declined since this time last year, by 0.8 and 1.2 percent, respectively.
Showing marked improvement are real estate and hospitality, both of which show 10 percent improvement from a year ago.
Other industries that added jobs in June are state government (1900 jobs), manufacturing (300 jobs) and leisure and hospitality (300 jobs) and financial activities (200 jobs, including real estate).
Context
Some labor trends and observations reveal a dichotomy between the state’s labor force and employer needs.
Gov. Peter Shumlin said Wednesday that Vermont is “desperate for well-trained, technically skilled employees,” a characterization echoed by many employers at a Department of Labor job fair Monday. Some hiring managers said they wanted to hire local talent, but weeks of recruiting had not yet turned up qualified applicants for technical positions.
It’s not just high-level workers that are hard to find, though.
One production manager at the job fair said he struggled to fill entry-level production positions.
“People don’t come to Vermont to work,” said Frank Marshall of ASK-intTag. The manufacturing company, which converts computer chips to RFID tags for things like licenses and passports, has more than doubled its production workforce since January, from 15 to 40 workers. He said they plan to hire for 20 or 30 more positions in the coming months as Chittenden County facility ramps up capacity.
But Marshall has a hard time finding workers who can pass drug tests, meet security clearance needs and who are willing to work third shift.
Similar challenges in locating employees with basic skills are noted in a new workforce needs assessment for the hospitality industry in the Northeast Kingdom.
Better integrated education and job training programs are needed to increase the supply of suitable workers, the report concludes. The authors also recommend recruiting from “untapped labor pools” such as older generations and new Americans.
Labor Commissioner Annie Noonan said the response to Monday’s job fair from both job seekers and employers was very positive. In addition to their ongoing workforce development initiatives, the department has indicated more job fairs are in the works.
