While the Alabama Department of Labor celebrates a drop in unemployment statewide, the department’s figures for Franklin County show parallel improvement: county unemployment decreased from 6.5 percent to 5.7 percent from May to June, while figures for the state as a whole show a decrease to 7.5 from 9.6 over the same time period.

The current unemployment rates are still up compared to 2019 – 3 percent in the county in June 2019 and 2.9 percent statewide.

State officials point to the pandemic as the primary factor impacting the continued higher number of unemployed people.

“We continue to make gains in our unemployment rate but remain above the record low rates we were experiencing prior to this pandemic,” said ADOL secretary Fitzgerald Washington. “People are returning to work as the economy further reopens, but we are beginning to see slight rises in the number of initial unemployment claims filed each week.”

In Franklin County, 829 people were recorded as unemployed in June, as compared to 947 in May.

For more information regarding how the Bureau of Labor Statistics calculates the unemployment rate visit https://www.bls.gov/bls/bls-covid-19-questions-and-answers.htm.