DeKalb Jobless Rate for April Drops to 3.4%

June 1, 2019
By: Dwayne Page

DeKalb County’s jobless rate for April dropped to 3.4% from 4.2% in March and was below the 3.8% rate recorded for April, 2018.

The Labor Force for April was 7,810. A total of 7,550 were employed and 270 were without work.

Jobless rates for April among the fourteen counties in the Upper Cumberland region were as follows from highest to lowest:
Clay: 5.6%
Jackson: 3.7%
Pickett: 3.7%
Van Buren: 3.5%
DeKalb: 3.4%
Cumberland: 3.4%
Warren: 3.2%
Fentress: 3.1%
Overton: 2.9%
White: 2.9%
Putnam: 2.7%
Macon: 2.5%
Cannon: 2.4%
Smith: 2.4%
Unemployment rates for 94 of Tennessee’s 95 counties dropped in April 2019 according to data released Thursday by the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development (TDLWD).

The unemployment rate in Maury County remained unchanged for the month.

Ninety-four counties have rates lower than 5 percent and only one county’s rate is higher than 5 percent.

Unemployment in Williamson County dipped below 2 percent in April. The county’s current rate of 1.9 percent marks a 0.5 of a percentage point drop from the previous month.

Davidson County’s unemployment rate hit a record low during April; it dropped by 0.5 of a percentage point and now sits at 2 percent. Rutherford County followed at 2.1 percent, while Cheatham, Wilson, Moore, and Sumner counties each recorded a rate of 2.2 percent in April.

Along with Davidson County, Wilson, Sumner, Smith, and Hickman counties marked record low unemployment. Rutherford County tied its all-time low rate.

“County unemployment rates continue to be extraordinarily positive,” said TDLWD Commissioner Jeff McCord. “Across our state, we are now seeing unemployment rates at or below 5 percent become the norm.”

Clay County has the state’s highest rate in April at 5.6 percent, which is a 0.4 of a percentage point decrease from the previous month. Hancock and Rhea counties have the next highest rates at 4.9 percent. Those rates represent a 0.9 of a percentage point drop for Hancock County and the rate is 0.8 of a percentage point lower in Rhea County when compared to the previous month.

Statewide, unemployment remains at Tennessee’s historic low of 3.2 percent. It is the third consecutive month the rate has been at the record level.

County unemployment rates are not seasonally adjusted, while the state and national rates use the seasonal adjustment to eliminate outside influences on the statistics.

May 31, 2019
By: Dwayne Page

Construction is expected to be completed later this summer on a new county fire hall in the Four Seasons Community, a project that has been in the making for four years.

In November the county commission voted 10-4 to award the bid for the project to Johnson Builders of Doyle, Tennessee. Their base bid was $160,820 with alternate deducts of $8,000 for work on the parking lot and $4,000 to add insulation to the building. The contractor had 270 days from the start of construction to complete the project. Inclement weather over the winter forced delays until late spring.

When the fire hall is finished, the county will have a fire truck ready to put in it after having secured grant funds with a local match months ago. The fire truck, 1993 model with less than 25,000 miles was purchased in October for $25,000 from a fire department in Connecticut.

The new fire station at Four Seasons will be the 12th station in the county operated by the DeKalb County Volunteer Fire Department. The other fire halls are on Short Mountain Highway, Midway Community, Belk, Keltonburg, Cookeville Highway, Austin Bottom Community, Liberty, Temperance Hall, Main Station, Johnson Chapel, and Blue Springs.

May 31, 2019
By:

On May 4th, 2019, five hundred and seventy four students graduated from Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee. Lydia Danielle Trail, a resident of Liberty and a first-generation college student, was among the numbers earning her Bachelor of Arts in English-Writing and a minor in Spanish.

After graduating from DeKalb County High School in May 2015, Trail started Lee in the fall of the same year. She became a member of the Student Leadership Council, a leadership council member of Sigma Tau Delta (the university’s English honors society), a community builder of Tharp Hall, a student worker for the Department of Language & Literature and the School of Nursing, a member of the Anthropology Club, and an intern for GenZ Publishing. While at Lee, she also traveled to Guatemala on a university medical missions trip and represented the university at the annual Sigma Tau Delta convention in St. Louis and presented her creative nonfiction piece “I Loathe You, Asthma.”

Trail was a Lettie Pate Whitehead scholar for four years, which is a scholarship awarded to less than 40 female Lee students every year, and was also awarded the Presidential scholarship.

She is the daughter of Heidi Trail, granddaughter of George & Linda Tripp, great-granddaughter of Doyle & Jesse Christian of Woodbury, and niece of Angela Tripp and Cassie Tripp.

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