Alabama's unemployment rate dropped to 6.1 percent for the month of April, according to unemployment statistics released by the Alabama Department of Labor.
The rate is a decrease for the first time in three months.
From January to March, the state's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate held steady at 6.2 percent. April's rate is a 0.1 percentage point drop.
“Every aspect of this month’s jobs data reflects positively on Alabama’s economy,” said Gov. Robert Bentley in a press release from the Labor Department. “More people are working and more jobs are filled. In fact, we are supporting almost 100,000 more jobs now than we were at the height of the recession. We are continuously working to keep that momentum going with events like last week’s huge job fair in Birmingham that drew more than 5,000 job seekers.”
The unemployment rate of the Auburn-Opelika metro area dropped more than half of a percentage point from 5.3 percent to 4.7 percent. Auburn maintains the state's lowest unemployment rate for any major city.
Lee County, which measured in at 4.5 percent, has the second-lowest unemployment rate with in the state after Shelby County with 3.7 percent.
Alabama remains in the bottom 10 states in terms of highest unemployment rates. The national unemployment rate — which has dropped from a height of 10 percent in 2009 when President Barack Obama took office — remained unchanged at 5.0 percent.
April's unemployment rate is one of the state's lowest since Bentley took office in 2011. The lowest rates were in January and February 2015 when the state measured in at a 6 percent unemployment rate.
“This is a promising month for us,” said Labor Commissioner Fitzgerald Washington. “There are more people looking for work and more people working this month than there have been all year. The number of people who are unemployed is down. We continue to see growth in our wage and salary employment, surpassing economists’ growth expectations by nearly 8,000 jobs only four months into the year.”
Civilian labor force participation — the measurement of how many people are working or actively seeking work — increased to 2,180,935 in April. Participation is up almost by almost 5,000 participants from last month's total of 2,176,457.
The total number of individuals counted as employed has increased by 27,218 since January of this year.
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