Cocke County Unemployment Rate Falls Below 5%

Unemployment numbers for Tennessee counties were released on Thursday and it has some good news for Cocke County. The county’s unemployment rate fell back below 5% in April to 4.8%. In March the unemployment rate in Cocke County rose to 5.1% giving the county the highest unemployment rate in the state. That honor now goes back to Perry County in west Tennessee. They were the only county in the state to have an unemployment rate higher than 5%…they are at 5.1%.

While Cocke County’s unemployment rate fell 3/10’s of a percent in April, it is still 94th out of 95 counties. Williamson County, just outside of Nashville had the lowest unemployment rate again at 2%. For the first time in a long time, Sevier County is not in the top 10 for the lowest unemployment rates in the state as their rate rose to over 2.5%. Greene County also saw an uptick in their unemployment rate as well going up to 3.3% up from 3.2 in March. The overall unemployment rate in the state of Tennessee stayed steady at 3.2%. That is the same rate the state had in March when it set a new record low unemployment rate.