According to the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center’s (MERIC) June 2021 Monthly Jobs Report, the Missouri labor market saw an increase of 130,000 jobs over the past year, but the state’s unemployment rate saw a slight increase from May 2021 to June 2021.
MERIC states that with the initial wave of COVID-19-related layoffs now more than a year in the past, the six-figure over-the-year job losses that had characterized the Missouri labor market for the last nine months of 2020 and the first three months of 2021 were replaced with an increase of more than 130,000 jobs from June 2020 to June 2021.
MERIC states Missouri non-farm payroll employment increased from May 2021 to June 2021, but the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate also increased by a tenth of a percentage point.
MERIC states employment, seasonally adjusted, increased by 4,200 jobs over the month, with job gains in both goods-producing and service-providing industries. The state’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 4.3% in June 2021, up from 4.2% in May 2021. MERIC states short-term shortages of semiconductor chips may hold down employment in manufacturing in the next few months.
MERIC states Missouri’s smoothed seasonally adjusted unemployment rate increased by a tenth of a percentage point in June 2021, rising to 4.3% from the May 2021 rate of 4.2%. With the start of the COVID-19 pandemic now more than a year in the past, the June 2021 rate was 3.8 percentage points lower than the June 2020 rate.
The rate had reached a low of 3.1% starting in July 2018, before gradually edging up to 3.5% by the end of 2019, and then to 3.7% in March 2020. The COVID-19 effect hit in April 2020, spiking the rate to 12.5% for that month. The rate decreased monthly for the rest of 2020, reaching 4.4% in December, and continued gradually downward through the first four months of 2021.
MERIC states the increase of two-tenths of a percentage point over the last two months appears to be related to a temporary shortage in the supply of semiconductor chips, which caused production slowdowns in some manufacturing industries.
MERIC states that due to benchmark revisions, Missouri’s unemployment rate rose a tenth of a percentage point higher than the national rate in January and February of 2020, but has been below the national rate for every month since February 2020. The national unemployment rate increased from 5.8% in May 2021 to 5.9% in June 2021. The estimated number of unemployed Missourians was 133,380 in June 2021, up by 4,343 from May’s 129,037.
MERIC states that the state’s not-seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate also increased in June 2021, rising by four-tenths of a percentage point to 5.1% from the May 2021 not-seasonally-adjusted rate of 4.7%. The shortage of semiconductor chips was a factor in the increase. The corresponding not-seasonally-adjusted national rate for June 2021 was 6.1%.
A year ago, the state’s seasonally adjusted rate was 8.1%, and the not-adjusted rate was also 8.1%.
