The U.S. unemployment rate fell to 3.7 percent in the month of September, according to the statistics released by the Labor Department on Friday. The unemployment rate is the lowest since December 1969.
The Labor Department says employers added 134,000 jobs around the country, lower than this point last year. The Associated Press reports those numbers may be lower due to the impact Hurricane Florence had on North Carolina and South Carolina.
The labor statistics for North Carolina have not been released as of Friday and statistics for the state will not be released until Oct. 19. Metropolitan area unemployment rate statistics for Charlotte-Gastonia-Rock Hill for the month of September will be released on Nov. 6.
North Carolina had a 3.9 percent unemployment rate in August 2018, tied for 27th in the nation with Delaware, Wyoming and Texas. The state with the lowest unemployment rate in the U.S. is Hawaii at 2.1 percent.
The Charlotte-Gastonia-Rock Hill unemployment rate was 3.7 percent or around 48,500 people as of August 2018, tied for 151st in the nation among metropolitan areas. For comparison, Raleigh’s rate was 3.4 percent in August, ranked 105th in the nation among metropolitan areas.
The Charlotte-Gastonia-Rock Hill metropolitan area has seen a drop in the unemployment rate from June to August of this year. The unemployment rate spiked earlier in the year from 3.4 percent in May to 3.9 percent in June.
The sector with the highest unemployment rate in the region as of August is government at 5.1 percent. The sectors with the lowest employment rates were leisure and hospitality at 0.5 percent and construction, mining and logging at 0.8 percent. The leisure and hospitality sector was at 3.7 percent in March of this year before dropping steadily. Construction employment increased by 23,000 jobs for the month of September throughout the country.