Nashville, TN – Tennessee’s unemployment rate decreased in June for the second consecutive month after reaching an all-time high in April, according to preliminary data from the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development.
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The June 2020 seasonally adjusted unemployment rate decreased to 9.7%, down 1.3 percentage points from May’s revised rate of 11%.
One year ago, the rate was 3.4%, very near the state’s all-time low unemployment rate of 3.3%.
Tennessee experienced record-high unemployment in April when the jobless number spiked to 15.5% at the height of business closures due to the COVID-19 health emergency. Before the pandemic, the state’s previous record-setting unemployment rate was 12.9% in January 1983.
Between May and June, the state’s employers added 108,500 nonfarm jobs. The top three sectors for job creation across Tennessee were leisure/hospitality, government, and education and health services.
As the state slowly reopens, employers are creating new job opportunities, but there is still a deficit when comparing year-to-year data. From June 2019 through June 2020, Tennessee lost 154,000 positions. The largest decrease came in the leisure/hospitality sector, followed by the manufacturing sector, and then the professional/business services sector.
Nationally, seasonally adjusted unemployment dropped by 2.2 percentage points in June, going from 13.3% to 11.1%.
You can access a complete analysis of Tennessee’s June unemployment data here [2].
Tennessee employers are hiring. Job seekers can find more than 190,000 current job openings on the state’s workforce development website, www.Jobs4TN.gov [3]. Tennesseans can also find free assistance with improving job search skills, updating resumes, and job training opportunities on the site.