The unemployment rate in Tallahatchie County jumped from 5.4% in March to 9.3% in April, the Mississippi Department of Employment Security reported Tuesday.
The MDES, which compiles the state’s employment data, noted that 450 members of the county’s 4,810-person labor force were unemployed in April. The labor force consists of everyone who has a job or is actively looking for one.
Revised March figures show 290 of 5,330 Tallahatchie County labor force members were jobless during that month, as the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on employment began to be felt.
The county’s April jobless rate was nearly double the 4.7% figure recorded in April 2019, when 250 of 5,340 available laborers age 16 and older did not find work.
United States unemployment in April was the worst it had been since the Great Depression. With the nation’s economy losing 20.5 million jobs last month, unemployment more than tripled, from 4.4% in March to 14.7% in April — the highest since the government started tracking the modern data series in 1948, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported.
In Mississippi, the state’s unemployment rate jumped from 4.8% in March to 15.6% in April as the number of unemployed persons from 64,300 to 183,000 amid the lockdown, MDES indicated.
Unemployment insurance benefits totaling $72.6 million were paid to 614,976 Mississippians in April, a drastic increase from the $7.9 million paid out on a total of 116,264 claims in March.
April unemployment rates for selected area counties, with March figures in parenthesis, are:
» Coahoma, 20.6 (7.0)
» Grenada, 12.7 (4.4)
» Lafayette, 11.1 (3.8)
» Leflore, 16.8 (6.5)
» Panola, 16.0 (5.8)
» Quitman, 15.8 (6.4)
» Sunflower, 14.0 (8.0)
» Yalobusha, 15.9 (4.7)
Tallahatchie was one of only eight counties in the state reporting less than double-digit joblessness in April.
Of the 74 counties having double-digit unemployment, Tunica County — where casinos were shuttered, stranding thousands of workers — reported Mississippi’s highest jobless rate of 31.7%.
Smith County had the state’s lowest rate of 7.6%.
