(Radio Iowa) – Iowa Workforce Development director Beth Townsend says the May unemployment rate dropped down slightly from the three-point-three percent in April. “Went down to three-point-two percent (3.2%) and was down from three-point-six percent (3.6%) a year ago. We gained 34-hundred jobs between April and May, which was a good sign,” she says. Townsend says job growth is slowly moving up.
“We saw durable goods manufacturing increase by 600 jobs, which is a nice increase. Construction remains 1700 jobs ahead of where it was the same time last year again. So that’s also a good sign. So we’re trending in the right direction, even though it’s slow growth,” she says. “We have been seeing a slow but steady growth in jobs for 2026 so far, and that’s a good sign.”
Townsend says the state has added 8,200 jobs since February. Iowa’s labor force participation rate was down one tenth of a point in May compared to April. “So labor force participation is made-up of everyone who is employed and also looking for work, so unemployed. The reason we saw a decrease in May, not surprising, we generally see a lot of retirements in May. And so probably it was just people dropping out of the workforce as part of a retirement plan.”
Townsend says the state still has more than 57-thousand job openings.
