The Illinois section of the St. Louis metropolitan area reported a 3.5% unemployment rate for June — setting a record low for the Metro East.
The unemployment rate decreased 1.3 percentage points from June 2024, when it stood at 4.8%, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Illinois Department of Employment Security.
The news of the Metro East’s record comes as the rest of Illinois saw the unemployment rate drop. Illinois’ rate now stands at 4.5%.
Overall, the Metro East lost 300 nonfarm jobs since last year.
The retail, government, private education-health services, financial, mining, manufacturing and other services industries all added workers over the past year. Professional-business services, leisure-hospitality, transportation-warehousing and information sectors all lost employment since last June.
Missouri’s unemployment rate stood at 4% in June, and the entire St. Louis metropolitan area tallied a rate of 3.7% in May, the latest month provided by the bureau.
What are those numbers across the different ethnic groups? Simply presenting those numbers without any analysis is lazy work.