Webster County’s unemployment rate increased two-tenths of a percentage point to 5.1 percent in January.
The county’s jobless rate went up from 4.9 percent in December, but was down from 6.5 percent in January 2017.
Mississippi Department of Employment Security statistics from 1990 forward show the county’s highest unemployment rate for January came in 2002, when it reached 15.6 percent. The lowest rate for that period was in 1998, when it dropped to 4.9 percent.
The number of unemployed Webster Countians in January remained unchanged at 190. The labor force, which is made up of everyone who has a job or is looking for one, decreased by 170 to 3,710.
The state’s seasonally unadjusted unemployment rate was 4.6 percent in January while the national average was 4.5 percent, also unadjusted. Rankin and Union counties posted the lowest unemployment rates for the month at 3.1 percent each while Jefferson had the highest at 13.3 percent.
January jobless rates in adjoining counties:
• Calhoun, 4 percent.
• Grenada, 4 percent.
• Oktibbeha, 4.5 percent.
• Chickasaw, 4.6 percent.
• Montgomery, 5.4 percent.
• Clay, 5.8 percent.
• Choctaw, 5.9 percent.
