Good News And Bad News In February Unemployment Rates For Cocke County

Individual county unemployment numbers for the month of February were released on Thursday. There was good news and bad news for Cocke County in the numbers released by the Department of Labor and Workforce Development. The good news is the county’s unemployment rate did go down four tenths of a percent from January to February. That puts Cocke County’s unemployment rate for the month of February at 6.6%. Now for the bad news, that means that Cocke County had the highest unemployment rate in the state in February. Lingering affects on employment from the September 27 flood along with tourism being slow in February equaled up to that number. Pickett County was the only other county in the state to have unemployment above 6%.

All other counties in the area saw their unemployment rates drop in February, but like Cocke County, the news was not all good in Sevier County. Typically Sevier County has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the state. February’s rate dropped from 5.2% in January to 5% in February. That means that Sevier County had one of the highest unemployment rates in the state as it is one of just 11 counties with a rate of 5% or higher.

Greene County’s rate went from 4.9 to 4.4%; Hamblen County dropped from 4% to 3.6%; Jefferson County dropped from 4.4 to 4.1%.