Cape County's jobless rate falls below 7% as economy reopens

Cape Girardeau County’s unemployment rate fell 2 percentage points in June as Missouri’s economy continued to reopen after many businesses closed in April and May during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Data released Thursday by the Missouri Department of Labor & Industrial Relations indicated Cape Girardeau County’s jobless rate dropped from 8.9% in May to 6.9% last month.

Statewide, Missouri’s unemployment rate in June fell 2.2 percentage points — from 10.1% in May to 7.9% last month — as an estimated 66,000 Missourians went back to work. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Missouri had 237,649 unemployed workers in June. The nation’s lowest unemployment rate last month was in Kentucky, where the percentage of unemployed Kentuckians dropped from 10.9% to 4.3% between May and June. The state with the highest unemployment rate last month was Massachusetts, which checked in at 17.4%, according to government data.

In comparison to all other states, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports Missouri’s June unemployment rate was the nation’s 15th lowest.

According to the Missouri Department of Labor, Cape Girardeau County’s unemployment rate has fallen 2.6% since April when the county’s jobless percentage peaked at 9.5%, higher than at any point in the previous decade. The only time it came close in the past 10 years was in January 2011, when the 8.2% of the county’s labor force was unemployed.

June unemployment rates in counties adjoining Cape Girardeau County were 6.4% in Bollinger County, down 2 percentage points from 8.4% in May; 5.7% in Perry County, down 6.7 percentage points from 12.4% in May; and 6.5% in Scott County, down 0.8 percentage points from 7.3% in May.

For the first time since February, the number of first-time claims for unemployment benefits fell below 1,000 in June. In March, April and May, there were 2,012, 5,011 and 1,354 claims, respectively, in Cape Girardeau County, but last month the number of initial claims for unemployment benefits in the county fell to 935. Prior to the coronavirus outbreak, the monthly number of first-time unemployment claims in Cape Girardeau County rarely exceeded 300 and was often below 200.

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