May 29, 2020
By: Dwayne Page
Statistics released today by the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development show a staggering increase in unemployment for each of Tennessee’s 95 counties in April as many businesses closed to help slow the spread of COVID-19.
At 22.4%, DeKalb County recorded the 8th highest April county unemployment rate in Tennessee, up by 18.4% from the 4% DeKalb jobless rate for March. The local unemployment rate for April, 2019 was 3.6%.
DeKalb County’s labor force for April was 7,793 compared to 7,724 in March while the number of unemployed jumped from 357 in March to 1,746 in April. A total of 6,047 DeKalb Countians were working in April, down from 7,367 in March.
Jobless rates for April among the fourteen counties in the Upper Cumberland region were as follows from highest to lowest:
Warren: 24.3%
DeKalb: 22.4%
Van Buren: 20.1%
Jackson: 17.1%
White: 16.9%
Cannon: 16.2%
Putnam 14.7%
Smith: 14.3%
Macon: 13.9%
Clay: 13.7%
Overton: 13.6%
Cumberland: 12.7%
Pickett: 10.6%
Fentress: 10.1%
The unprecedented and historic spike in unemployment impacted some counties more drastically than others, but no area of Tennessee escaped the pandemic’s effect on the state’s workforce.
Fayette County had Tennessee’s lowest unemployment rate in April. At 9.4%, the county’s rate increased by 6.1 percentage points when compared to its revised March rate of 3.3%.
Weakley County had the second-lowest unemployment rate for the month at 9.6%, followed by Hardeman County at 9.7%.
Fayette, Weakley, and Hardeman were the only counties in the state with unemployment rates below 10% in April.
Sevier County recorded Tennessee’s highest unemployment rate for the month. The county’s new jobless figure of 29.5% represents a staggering spike of 26 percentage points when compared to its revised March rate of 3.5%.
Neighboring Cocke County had the second-highest jobless rate in April at 25.6%, a 20.9 percentage point increase from the previous month. Grundy County ranked third-highest with a rate of 25.3%, which is a 21.1 percentage point spike when compared to March’s rate.
When comparing Tennessee’s three largest cities, Nashville had the highest unemployment rate in April. The city’s rate of 15.9% is a 13.5 percentage point increase over its revised March rate of 2.4%. Memphis recorded a rate of 14.3%, a spike of 10.1 percentage points from the previous month, and Knoxville’s April rate of 14.7% is an 11.8 percentage point jump.
Statewide, unemployment reached a historic high in April. The seasonally adjusted rate of 14.7% surpassed the previous all-time high figure of 12.9% in January 1983.
Unlike the statewide unemployment rate, county unemployment statistics are not seasonally adjusted.