(Radio Iowa) – Iowa’s unemployment and labor force participation rates both were down one tenth of a percent in March. Iowa Workforce Development director Beth Townsend says things have pretty much been steady so far this year. “There just hasn’t been enough fluctuation or trend information in the first three months to really be able to make any predictions about what we’ll see in the second quarter,” Townsend says. “And that’s probably not a bad thing because you don’t like volatility in your workforce data.”
While there’s not been volatility in the labor market, there’s also not been big jumps. “But we’re also not seeing trends necessarily in the direction we would like them to go, or we don’t have enough evidence, I guess I should say, to say what a trend is going to be in terms of unemployment rate or labor force participation rate,” Townsend says. Unemployment dropped to three-point-three percent in March, and Townsend says there are still 54-thousand jobs available.
“I don’t know that there’s as much hiring going on as you might think. What employers are looking for are skilled workers. And so we obviously always need to continue to develop our skilled talent pipeline, and that’s especially true in healthcare,” she says. Townsend says nursing in particular is an area of need. “Nine out of the top ten openings in Iowa are almost always healthcare related, and registered nurses are always at the top of that list,” Townsend says. “So we need to do everything we can to develop a very healthy and robust pipeline for our registered nurses, but truly across all of healthcare.”
Townsend says national issues also are having an impact on employers. “There’s been a lot going on in the world in the first quarter of 2026 that could and has impacted the economy and by extension workforce,” she says. Townsend says we may see more information in May that would give us a better idea of where the trends are going.
