County Unemployment Numbers Improve

While the overall unemployment rate remained unchanged in the state at 3.4% individual county unemployment numbers were released on Thursday and that showed some good news. All counties in Tennessee saw their unemployment rate drop below 5%. The good news for Cocke County is that it is no longer lumped in the 10 counties with the highest unemployment rates. The unemployment rate for September fell to 4.2%…that’s down from 4.7% in August. The September 2022 unemployment rate is nearly identical to September of 2021 when the unemployment rate in Cocke County was 4.1%. There are 14,354 in the labor force in Cocke County and just 597 of those individuals are unemployed.

Elsewhere, Greene County’s unemployment rate dropped from 3.9 to 3.4%. Hamblen County had a similar drop from 3.5 to 3.1%. Jefferson County down to 3.1% from 3.4% in August. Sevier County has the lowest unemployment rate in the area and the lowest fourth in the state at 2.4%…joining Knox County with that number. The lowest unemployment rate in the state was once again Williamson County with 2.1%…the highest was once again Perry County. The unemployment rate dropped below 5% there to 4.9%.