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Missouri jobless rate shows slight downtick in February

The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in Missouri decreased by a tenth of a percentage point in February 2021, dropping to 4.2 percent from January’s rate of 4.3 percent. Lingering effects of COVID-19, however, has left February’s rate 0.6 percentage points higher than one year ago.

Missouri’s smoothed seasonally adjusted unemployment rate decreased by a tenth of a percentage point in February 2021, dropping to 4.2 percent from the benchmarked January 2021 rate of 4.3 percent.

Due to the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the February 2021 rate was 0.6 percentage points higher than the February 2020 rate.

The rate had reached a low of 3.1 percent starting in July 2018, before gradually edging up to 3.5 percent by the end of 2019, and then to 3.7 percent in March 2020. The COVID-19 effect hit in April 2020, spiking the rate to 12.5 percent for that month.

The rate decreased monthly for the rest of 2020, reaching 4.3 percent in January. Missouri’s unemployment rate remained below the national rate.

The estimated number of unemployed Missourians was 128,934 in February 2021, down by 1,615 from January’s 130,549.

The state’s not-seasonally-adjusted rate was 5.0 percent in February 2021, also down by a tenth of a percentage point from the January 2021 not-seasonally-adjusted rate of 5.1 percent. The corresponding not-seasonally-adjusted national rate for February 2021 was 6.6 percent.

A year ago, the state’s seasonally adjusted rate was 3.6 percent, and the not-adjusted rate was 3.8 percent.