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By Carey Reeder | Managing Editor

After Chilton County’s unemployment rate rose to 2.5% in June, the county saw a significant increase in employment in the month of July. The civilian work force in the county increased from 19,801 to 19,905, and the number of employed individuals also increased from 19,801 to 19,905 from June to July.

The number of unemployed individuals in the county decreased from 499 to 442 leading to an unemployment rate decrease of 2.5% in June to 2.2% in July. All 67 counties in Alabama saw either a stable or decreased unemployment rate from June to July.

Nearby Shelby County came in with the lowest unemployment rate in the state at 1.7% followed by Morgan County at 1.8%. Wilcox County has the highest unemployment rate in July at 6.7% followed by Dallas County at 5.5% and Perry County at 5.4%. However, all of those counties saw a significant decrease in rates from June, including Wilcox going down from 7.5%. All individual county unemployment rates are non-seasonally adjusted rates.

The state of Alabama as a whole set a new preliminary, seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate in July at 2.1%. That number is lower than June 2023’s rate of 2.3% and July 2022’s rate of 2.6%. Alabama’s non-seasonally adjusted number is 2.3%.

“Alabama continues to set economic records,” Fitzgerald Washington, Secretary of the Alabama Department of Labor, said. “Not only did we maintain our streak of setting new employment records, we also saw yet another decrease in our unemployment rate, bringing us to a new record low of 2.1%.”

The rate represents 48,834 unemployed individuals in the state of Alabama which is also a record low. The number is down from 50,377 in June 2023 and 59,409 in July 2022.