Las Vegas Valley jobless rate rises in January

The Las Vegas Valley’s jobless rate rose in January.

Unemployment moved up to 6.5 percent, compared with 6.2 percent in December, the state Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation reported Tuesday.

The local number showed a different trend from the state figure, which ticked down a tenth of a percentage point to 6.2 percent in January, though local rates are not seasonally adjusted and can swing more widely than state statistics.

“Month-over-month increases are not cause for concern as such volatility is not unusual,” said Bill Anderson, the employment department’s chief economist. “The annual average rates are better indicators of the health of the labor market.”

Local unemployment was down from 7.5 percent in January 2015.

The uptick in unemployment wasn’t due to a poor job market: Employers across the valley added 8,100 jobs from December to January. Year over year, the market’s jobs count was up 26,000 to 921,300, for 2.9 percent job growth — about a third faster than the U.S. job-formation rate of 1.9 percent.

But the number of people looking for jobs also increased, rising by 2.3 percent, or 23,800 people, to nearly 1.05 million.

Combined with swings in seasonal hiring, a growing labor pool can cancel out some of the benefits of job growth.

The federal jobless rate in January was 4.9 percent.

New numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics also show Nevada ranked No. 5 in the nation for unemployment in January, tied with Alabama and behind Mississippi (6.7 percent), Alaska (6.6 percent), New Mexico (6.5 percent) and West Virginia and Illinois (tied at 6.3 percent).

If you include discouraged workers who have stopped looking for a job and underemployed part-timers who would rather have full-time jobs, Nevada’s unemployment rate averaged 13.9 percent in 2015, compared with a national average of 10.4 percent.

Contact Jennifer Robison at jrobison@reviewjournal.com. Find @_JRobison on Twitter.