The Arkansas unemployment continued to tick down in October falling to 5.1 percent. It marks the fifth straight month of a declining unemployment rate according to information released by the Department of Workforce Services on Friday. It sits just above the national average of 5 percent.
Chief Economist and Economic Forecaster Michael Pakko at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock said the state’s economy has continued to improve since October of last year when unemployment was at 5.7 percent.
“What we’re seeing is continued strength in the three big service sectors that have been the engines of job growth over the past several years and that’s professional and business services, education and health services, and leisure and hospitality," he added, "in spite of the cyclical variation there we’re still finding pretty strong job growth."
Professional and business services posted 4,400 new jobs since October 2014 but fell by 100 positions from September to October. Education and health services grew by 1,100 in a month bringing the year to date total to 5,400. Leisure and hospitality is up 3,200 for the year but dropped 2,100 jobs from September to October.
The director for the University of Arkansas Center for Business and Economic Research Kathy Deck said other key sectors like construction are performing well (up 8,200 since Oct. 2014) but despite a good month the state is lagging behind in manufacturing.
“The US is doing better from a manufacturing employment perspective than Arkansas is right now. Arkansas is going sideways or slightly down whereas in the US overall manufacturing employment is up a bit,” said Deck. “We have to ask ourselves what is it about the kinds of things we’re making which make us different?"
Arkansas has lost 3,900 manufacturing jobs since October of last year, but the sector did post a gain of 600 jobs from September to October 2015. Relatively upward US manufacturing employment numbers in recent years have tampered down in recent reports, remaining relatively unchanged from September to October and year to date.
