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Kansas April Unemployment Rate Down, But Report Isn't All Good News

Kansas Department of Labor

The latest jobs report for Kansas is a mixed bag.

Kansas’ unemployment rate fell slightly for the second month in a row, but the state Department of Labor says job growth has stalled.

According to a report released Friday, the unemployment rate for April was 3.8 percent, down from March's rate of 3.9 percent. It’s also down from April of last year, which was 4.2 percent.

Locally, Sedgwick County’s unemployment rate dropped sharply, from 4.6 in March to 3.9 in April.

Credit Kansas Department of Labor
Seasonally adjusted jobs for April 2016.

The Kansas Department of Labor says the number of people who received unemployment benefits in last month was down by 6,700 from last year, but that's not all good news, as the state lost about 3,000 private sector jobs since March, particularly in the Leisure and Hospitality industry. Over the past year, Kansas lost about 600 seasonally adjusted nonfarm jobs; losses were felt in industries such as construction and oil and gas production.

The state's labor force also shrank by more than 3,000 people between March and April, meaning a smaller percentage of workers say they're unemployed.

With additional reporting from Stephen Koranda.

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Aileen LeBlanc is news director at KMUW. Follow her on Twitter @Aileen_LeBlanc.

To contact KMUW News or to send in a news tip, reach us at news@kmuw.org.

Nadya Faulx is KMUW's Digital News Editor and Reporter, which means she splits her time between working on-air and working online, managing news on KMUW.org, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. She joined KMUW in 2015 after working for a newspaper in western North Dakota. Before that she was a diversity intern at NPR in Washington, D.C.