Vermont’s unemployment rate rose slightly in July, from 4.4 to 4.6 percent, according to numbers out Monday from the Vermont Department of Labor and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The increase marks a slight divergence from the national unemployment rate, which dropped from 7.6 to 7.4 percent.
Despite Vermont’s uptick since June, the state maintains the lowest unemployment rate in New England. Hawaii has taken its ranking as fourth lowest in the country; Vermont now is tied for fifth lowest with Utah and Wyoming.
Nonetheless, more people were employed in the state in July than were in the same month last year, when the unemployment rate was 5.2 percent.
Labor Commissioner Annie Noonan said in a news release that the number of people filing claims for unemployment insurance “continues to decline.”
She added that as a small state, “programs that we offer can have a big impact on improving the lives of individual Vermonters through job placements, training programs, internships, career exploration and other career planning and placement services.”
Seasonal adjustment
The overarching rates measure seasonally adjusted unemployment estimates — percentages “smoothed” by statistical methodologies that take seasonal fluctuations into account to allow for more meaningful month-to-month comparisons.
Not seasonally adjusted, the labor survey indicates a drop in the unemployment rate in every labor market area in the state, compared both to June 2013 and July 2012. The non-adjusted statewide rate in July was 4.4 percent, compared to 5.2 percent a year ago.
In keeping with state trends, the labor market area with the lowest unemployment rate, not adjusting for seasonal fluctuations, is Hartford. The highest is Newport. Initial data show the rates in both those areas dropped to 3.0 percent and 5.7 percent, respectively.
It’s not uncommon for seasonally adjusted and non-seasonally adjusted rates to move in different directions. As the state’s economic and labor market information chief, Mathew Barewicz, explained, it essentially means that the job market moved in a direction consistent with historical data for the month, but not as much as expected.
In July’s case, the unadjusted unemployment rate went down. But it didn’t drop as far as the models predicted, so the seasonally adjusted rate reads as an increase.
Barewicz said that a similar blip occurred last June and July, prompting him to wonder if conditions have shifted enough to merit altering the state’s seasonal adjustment model. He’s noted it for discussion with the Department of Labor’s federal partners in Boston.
The seasonal adjustment model is re-evaluated near the start of each calendar year, to make sure that on-the-ground realities such as the layoffs at IBM, or Jay Peak Resort’s transition to a year-round attraction, are taken into account. Otherwise, the numbers being crunched are disconnected from the labor and unemployment realities in each state, Barewicz said.
On the ground
For now, the most striking seasonally adjusted year-over-year trend is continued sluggishness in the construction industry — down 4.3 percent from 2012. Declines of 1.1 percent and 1.2 percent, respectively, surface in retail trade and in the warehousing and utilities area of transportation. The retail drop is made more notable by its position as one of the state’s largest employment sectors.
Looking up are wholesale trade (up 4.3 percent) and manufacturing of non-durable goods (up 3.9 percent). Some administrative support positions have continued to climb, increasing a total of 11.9 percent in July from the year before. And Vermont’s tiny arts, entertainment and recreation industry, employing just about 4,600 people in July, nonetheless marked a 15 percent spike over 2012.
Without seasonal adjustments, total private employment in the state rose by 3,500 positions between June and July — a gain distributed through modest to significant increases in most sectors that managed to outweigh a predictable summer loss of 9,700 jobs in local government education.
