The unemployment rate in Tennessee continued to slowly drop in August.
Data released Thursday by the Tennessee Department of Labor & Workforce Development (TDLWD) showed the state’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in August was 4.6%, down from 4.7% in July.
That rate is 3.5 percentage points lower than the state’s unemployment rate in August 2020.
“Employers brought an additional 4,400 employees into the workforce between July and August,” according to a news release from TDLWD. “The manufacturing sector had the largest increase in employment, followed by the mining/logging/construction sector, and then the government sector.”
The TDLWD reported the state’s workforce increased by 121,600 jobs between August 2020 and August 2021. Professional/business services accounted for the largest percentage of that growth, followed by the leisure/hospitality sector and the trade/transportation/utilities sector.
Since having a 5.1% unemployment rate in March, Tennessee’s rate has dropped on average 0.1 percentage points per month. The seasonally adjusted rate in the U.S. dropped from 5.2% to 5.0% in August.
U.S. Department of Labor data released Thursday showed Tennessee had 5,335 initial unemployment claims for the week ending Sept. 11, down 6,975 claims from the same week in 2020.
