(The Center Square) – Kentucky’s unemployment rate continued to increase incrementally in December, even as more residents found work during the month.
The 5.2% rate was a tenth of a point higher than November’s figure, according to a release from the Kentucky Education and Labor Cabinet’s Kentucky Center for Statistics. It’s also a nearly 21% increase from the December 2023 unemployment rate of 4.3%.
“Throughout the past year, both the number of people employed and the number of people in the labor force in Kentucky have increased,” said Mike Clark, the director of the University of Kentucky Center for Business and Economic Research, in a statement. “Since workers are entering the labor force faster than they are finding jobs.”
Kentucky’s civilian labor pool, a total of 2,085,059, grew by more than 5,000 people from November to December, according to the release. The state added 1,973 jobs during the last month of 2024, with the number of people working reaching 1,976,436. The number of people identified as unemployed grew by 3,065 to 108,623.
The national unemployment rate for December was 4.1%, down slightly from the 4.2% the U.S. Department of Labor reported for November.
While Kentucky’s unemployment rate has increased in recent months, so, too, has the state’s labor participation rate, which the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics defines as the number of people employed and unemployed divided by the state’s workforce-aged civilian population. BLS defines the unemployed as people who are not currently working but have actively sought a job in the past four weeks.
In November, Kentucky’s workforce participation rate was 58.2%, up from 56.9% in December 2023. Compared to some neighboring states, Kentucky’s November rate remains lower than Indiana’s (63.4%), Ohio’s (62.6%) and Tennessee’s (59.4%). It does remain higher than West Virginia’s 54.9%.
KYSTATS also released federal data showing the jobs in the state, excluding the self-employed and those in agricultural fields, rose by 28,700, or 1.4%, over the past year.
Clark said the number of jobs increased in 10 of the past 12 months, with eight of the 11 business sectors showing year-to-year growth.
For example, the state has seen the number of construction jobs increase by 4,300 in the past year. That’s up 4.8% from December 2023. In addition, even though the educational and health services sector lost 700 jobs from November to December, businesses in those categories still added 16,500 jobs from December 2023 to December 2024.
