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Lawrence County Unemployment Spikes - More To Come?

Last updated on Thursday, January 24, 2008

(BEDFORD) - Job rankings in Lawrence County took a huge hit this month.

According to the Indiana Department of Workforce Development, Lawrence County now has the 2nd worst unemployment in the State of Indiana, jumping from 6th place from October to November, the most recent data compiled.

Unemployment jumped from 5.4% in October 2007 to 6.3% in November.

But a move like this is apparently par for the course throughout the entire 8th Economic Growth Region which includes Brown, Daviess, Greene, Lawrence, Martin, Monroe, Orange and Owen counties, all of which saw unemployment rise.

Monroe jumped 0.7% to 4.0%, and Orange just barely edged up by one to 5.1%.

Bedford is appropriately the center of the job losses in Lawrence County, jumping from 7.4% to 8.9%, almost double the national average. The only county seat in the region doing worse than Bedford is Spencer Indiana, which jumped more than 3 full points to 11.6%.

And with Visteon on its way out, and GE in Bloomington and Harman-Becker both shutting down later on, more bad news appears to be on the way.

The State of Indiana as a whole climbed 0.2% to 4.4%, but that still puts us ahead of our neighbors, the closest being Kentucky at 4.6%, the farthest being Michigan which has the worst unemployment nationwide at 6.9%.

Idaho still leads the nation at 2.7%.

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