The jobless rate in the US drops again for much of the country

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released a report Wednesday showing that the unemployment rate in the U.S. during the month of August had dropped in most metropolitan areas. However, more than a hundred metropolitan areas saw a rise in unemployment.

What did the report say?

According to the BLS, 224 out of the 389 (58 percent) metropolitan areas in the U.S. saw a drop in unemployment rates in August compared to the same month in 2018. An additional 33 saw no change at all.

For this data, the BLS looks at only non-farm jobs.

What's the good?

The metropolitan area of Portland-South Portland, Maine, had the lowest unemployment rate in the country (1.7 percent). The largest drop in unemployment, meanwhile, during the month of August in Anniston-Oxford-Jacksonville, Alabama.

The metropolitan area with the largest percentage increase in employment was Dallas-Plano-Irving (which saw an increase of 3.8 percent), while the largest increase in employment by number was seen in New York-Jersey City-White Plains, New York-New Jersey (an increase of 109,000).

Seattle, San Francisco, Orlando, Florida, Houston, and Phoenix were also among the cities a drop in their unemployment rates.

What's the bad?

But not all regions of the country were so lucky. Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis in Wisconsin (currently at 3.8 percent unemployment), Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington in Minnesota and Wisconsin (2.9 percent), and Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro in Oregon and Washington state (4.3 percent) saw a slight increase in their unemployment levels by 0.4 percent.

Only two areas in the entire country still have unemployment rates higher than 10 percent: Yuma, Arizona, with a 23.0 percent unemployment rate, and El Centro, California, with 22.1.