The Lynchburg region’s unemployment rate in June was higher than it has been in any month since the early 1980s.
William Mezger, chief economist for the Virginia Employment Commission, said furloughs at factories connected to the automobile industry could be what drove the region’s unemployment rate to 8.2 percent. Also, in June high school students entered the work force to find that jobs were scarce.
Since June 2008, when the unemployment rate was 4.3 percent, the region has lost jobs in the manufacturing, retail, transportation and construction sectors, according to job counts released Wednesday.
Virginia’s jobless rate was 7.3 percent in June, compared to 4 percent in June 2008.
Appomattox County and Bedford city actually had their unemployment rates drop slightly from May to June. The drops resulted from an increase of about 10 jobs, according to employment data.
In Central Virginia, the city of Lynchburg had the highest unemployment rate at 9.3 percent, compared to 8.3 percent in May and 5.1 percent in June 2008. The city actually had a slight increase from May to June in the number of employed people, but its labor force grew by 400 people.
City Manager Kimball Payne suggested that the city’s higher jobless rate could be linked to students looking for summer jobs, therefore increasing the labor force. He said he did not know of companies having large layoffs in the month. Civic Development Group closed its Lynchburg telemarketing office in May but that affected fewer than 60 workers.
Mezger said that factories in the Lynchburg area usually have some furloughs in the summer. Those furloughs usually come in July, but they may have begun in June this year, he said.
The Lynchburg area has several facilities that produce materials for automobile manufacturers, and the shrinking automobile market probably has affected them, he said.
Looking at preliminary figures for the month of July, Mezger did not expect a change for the Lynchburg area soon. “I think you’re going to have a month or so where unemployment is about as high as it is now,” he said.
In the fall, as private colleges ramp up hiring, the jobless rate could decline slowly, Mezger said. “When you have as much unemployment as you have now, it’s just going to take a long time for those people to be rehired.”
The last time the Lynchburg area’s jobless rate was this high was the early 1980s, Mezger said, citing several months in early 1983.
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