A summary is below. More details are available on our State Employment Page.

January 23, 2019

Summary

• Kentucky added 4,500 jobs and the unemployment rate declined by 0.1 percentage point to 4.4 percent in December according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data.

• Over the past twelve months, Kentucky added 21,300 jobs and the unemployment rate fell by 0.1 percentage point from 4.5 percent.

• In December, Kentucky's private sector added 5,000 jobs and over the past twelve months, it created 22,000 jobs.

• The number of unemployed Kentuckians fell by 1,629 in December, and over the past year, 22,555 Kentuckians found jobs.

• Kentucky’s labor force participation rate decreased to 59.2 percent from 59.3 percent in December.  Since last year, the labor force participation rate rose 0.3 percentage point.

• The national unemployment rate rose by 0.2 percentage point to 3.9 percent in December.  State employment and unemployment data for January is scheduled for release on March 11, 2019.  The national employment situation report for January will be released on Friday, February 1, 2019.