Missouri Job Market Sees Slight Decrease in November

The Missouri labor market showed further improvement in November 2020. Employment, seasonally adjusted, increased by 17,400 jobs over the month. The state’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate decreased to 4.4% from the October 2020 rate of 4.6%, and the civilian labor force increased more than 23,000. However, the labor market still showed substantial losses from 2019 levels.

Missouri’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate has now been either below or equal to the national rate for 68 consecutive months. The national unemployment rate was 6.7% in November 2020, also down 0.2 percentage points from 6.9% in October 2020.

The estimated number of unemployed Missourians was 131,215 in November 2020, down by 4,766 from October’s 135,981.

Due to lingering layoffs from COVID-19 impacts, the state’s November 2020 rate was still 1 percentage point higher than the November 2019 rate. The rate was steady at 3.5% in January and February 2020 before the COVID-19 spike began in March 2020. The rate peaked at 10.2% in April 2020 before decreasing slightly in May 2020, then moving strongly lower in June and July of 2020 as COVID-19 restrictions were eased. After a second wave of COVID-19 infections in August 2020 caused a small setback for the labor market, unemployment again decreased sharply in September 2020, followed by smaller decreases in October 2020 and November 2020.

Both goods-producing industries and service-providing industries contributed to private-sector employment gains over the month, with the largest increases in trade, transportation & utilities (+8,000 jobs), educational & health services (+5,500 jobs) and manufacturing (+5,200 jobs). Smaller gains occurred in financial activities (+1,400 jobs), professional & business services (+1,200 jobs) and construction (+600 jobs).

KPGZ News – Brian Watts contributed to this story