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By Carey Reeder | Managing Editor

The Alabama Department of Labor released the unemployment numbers for the month of February on March 22, and Chilton County’s rate increased for the fourth consecutive month.

Since October 2023, Chilton County’s unemployment rate increased from 1.9% to 3.0% in February. The county’s rate increased from 2.8% in January and 2.3% in February 2023. Those numbers represent 606 unemployed persons in the county in February, 566 in January and 454 in February 2023. The number of employed persons in the county in February is 19,645, which is down from 19,737 in January, but up from 19,558 in February 2023 despite the lower unemployment rate in the county during the same time.

“Job growth is also rising in Alabama,” Fitzgerald Washington, Secretary of the Alabama Department of Labor, said in a press release. “Our economy is supporting nearly 40,000 more jobs than we were last year.”

Counties in the state with the lowest unemployment rates are Shelby County at 2.6%, the lowest in the state, followed by Morgan County at 2.7% and Madison and Limestone counties at 2.8%. Wilcox County sits with the highest unemployment rate in Alabama at 10.6%, with Dallas County at 6.8% and Perry County at 6.6% coming in after.

The State of Alabama’s labor force participation rate remained unchanged at 57.4% in February, however, the state’s preliminary, seasonally adjusted unemployment rate jumped to 3.0%, up from January’s 2.9%. It is also up from 2.3% in February 2023, and the rate represents 69,086 unemployed persons in February, 66,558 in January and 53,034 in February 2023. The state’s non-seasonally adjusted unemployment rate sits at 3.4% in February.