There is an interesting East Valley Tribune article on the unemployment rates in Arizona and the Valley.
Phoenix maintains its (relatively) low unemployment rate.
But as the article points out, the number of people employed in Arizona declined by 4,600 from March. The rate dropped because the number of people actually looking for work declined even more — by 12,500.
On the real estate front, the construction industry remains a weak spot, losing 3,200 jobs in April. 600 in the finance sector lost jobs in April, and the year-over-year loss there is a whopping 7,900.
Lower unemployment is generally a good economic indicator, but one must closely examine the numbers. In this case, the UI rate alone doesn’t necessarily tell the whole story (further proof that statistics can be misleading — be careful when interpreting them).
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The Phoenix Real Estate Guy was started by Jay Thompson, and I have a little blogging problem... he liked to say...
Yeah i agree you can’t really gauge the economic situation by purely watching the unemployment rate. Although it does to a certain degree, is affected by the economy, various other factors are involved.
Low unemployment is good especially with way the economy is now. My wife has family in Phoenix and they always are trying to convince her that we should move down there because there is a lot of job opportunities, so they claim.
Arizona's residential-building permits have fallen by over 70% since t he height of the construction boom. You would think that the overall unemployment rate would more closely reflect those building job losses and that the jobless rate would be worse. Some sectors of the Arizona economy must be doing well to compensate.