Johnson County’s unemployment rate fell to 9.8% in May, after reaching a 21st century high of 13.6% in April.
State governments ordered many businesses to shutter temporarily due to the coronavirus pandemic, causing an economic downturn that gripped the country. Before that, in March, the county’s unemployment rate was just 2.7%.
The Indiana state unemployment rate also went down, to 11.9% in May from 17.1% in April. During the height of the Great Recession in June 2009, the state’s unemployment rate was 10.6%.
Despite the month over month decrease, the Johnson County unemployment rate is up significantly from May 2019, when 2.5% of the Johnson County workforce was unemployed. More than 8,000 Johnson County residents were jobless in May of a total of fewer than 81,500 residents in the local workforce.
Although unemployment rates went up last month, just 20 of Indiana’s 92 counties had a higher percentage of its work-eligible populace employed.
This data comes from the May report released by the Indiana Department of Workforce Development.
Daviess County in southwestern Indiana had the lowest unemployment rate in May at 5.6 %, while Howard County (Kokomo) had the highest at 21.8%.
