Michigan’s unemployment rate falls again

Down 0.3 points to 9 percent in latest report

3/7/2012

LANSING — Michigan’s unemployment has fallen again in the latest monthly report to 9 percent, a level not seen since 2008.

The state said Wednesday that the seasonally adjusted jobless rate dropped 0.3 percentage points in January from the month before. The last time Michigan’s unemployment was lower was in September, 2008, when it was 8.9 percent.

In the past 12 months, the state’s jobless rate has fallen 1.9 percentage points. January is the fourth straight month that unemployment has been below 10 percent.

Michigan’s joblessness has been falling faster than the nation’s as a whole, but still leads the U.S. average, which was 8.3 percent in January.

Ohio announced last week that its unemployment rate in January dropped two-tenths of a percentage point to 7.7 percent.

In another sign of an improving Michigan economy, the civilian workforce stopped contracting in January, rising a modest 2,000 to 4.632 million.