The Virginia Employment Commission released statistics last Wednesday indicating Central Virginia's unemployment rate dropped in December to its lowest point in two years. The Charlottesville Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes most of Central Virginia, reported a 5.2 percent unemployment rate, the lowest since January 2009.
Of the 107,853 people in the area workforce, only 5,600 were unemployed at the end of last year, a comparatively low figure. Nationally, the unemployment rate is 9 percent, and Virginia's statewide rate is 6.4 percent.
Donald Lillywhite, labor market information director for the Virginia Employment Commission, said the Charlottesville area's unemployment rate ranked 17th among 351 small metropolitan areas in the country. This classification applies to metropolitan areas with fewer than one million residents, as defined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The small metropolitan area with the lowest rate is Lincoln, Neb., where only 3.5 percent of the labor force is unemployed.
Lillywhite partially attributed the regional economic stability to the sustainable jobs provided by the University and the University Medical Center.
"It's a great area in good times, and it's a pretty good area in down times," Lillywhite said.
Charlottesville City Spokesperson Ric Barrick agreed with Lillywhite, saying that a low unemployment rate is "somewhat normal for the area. We are very sheltered by the University." Despite the improvement, Rep. Robert Hurt, R-Va., said more progress still needs to be made.
"It is critical that we continue in our efforts to cut spending, reduce unnecessary government regulations and keep taxes low in order to grow the economy and create the long-lasting private sector jobs that 5th-District Virginians need," Hurt said in a statement released Friday.
Barrick believes that the trend in the area will continue to project upward, eventually bringing the rate back down to where it was prior to the economic recession.
"We were down to 3.8 before the recession hit," Barrick said. "We may not get there as quickly as we want, but there's a whole lot of space to build big business. We have to make sure we support people starting their own businesses."
Lillywhite also expects the rate will continue to fall slightly.\n"If it's the lowest it has been in the last two years, the idea is that it continues to drop about a tenth of a percent every month or so," Lillywhite said.
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