Jobless rate little changed across New England

By PBN Staff
Twitter: @ProvBusNews

WASHINGTON – New England’s unemployment rate remained essentially unchanged in April, dropping to 6.9 percent compared with 7 percent in March, the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics announced Friday.

Year-over-year, New England’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate dropped 1 percentage point from 7.9 percent in April 2011. Nationally, the unemployment rate dropped 0.9 percentage points to 8.1 percent.

Rhode Island’s unemployment rate rose 0.1 percentage points from 11.1 percent in March to 11.2 percent in April.

The Ocean State had the highest jobless rate among the New England states, the second-highest jobless rate in the nation – behind Nevada – and saw the largest year-over-year percentage decrease in employment with a 0.9 percent loss.