This week we featured the report that Houston-area employers added 10,300 jobs from January to February. This piece of good news is not limited to one city. In Vermont, Alabama and New York, unemployment rates are dropping and thousands of new jobs are popping up.
There is encouraging news for Vermont in the state’s department of labor report showing the unemployment rate dropping to just over 6.5 percent. The state says Vermont added about 2,200 jobs in January and February. (WTEN.com)
Encouraging signs may uplift Alabama’s jobless ranks: February employment ended a three month slide in the state and its work force grew by 11,300. The State Department of Industrial Relations says those jobs came from across the board in areas such as professional and business services, manufacturing, hospitality, government and educational and health services. (MyFoxAL.com)
Trends are beginning to turn positive in upstate New York, too, according to state labor markets analyst James Ross. “I think we are seeing some real growth in the economy.”
“We’ve been seeing the job losses narrow for a while,” he said this week. Between January and February, the region saw an uptick of 4,700 jobs, an above-average figure that was last reached in 2002, when another recession was ending. (Times-Union)
Even Elkhart, Indiana is seeing job growth. President Obama has visited there several times, highlighting their high unemployment rate. A recreational vehicle manufacturer announced this week that it is expanding, with plans to hire up to 265 new workers and invest more than $2.6 million to buy and equip a 125,000 square-foot manufacturing complex there. (Business Week)