MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) - Alabama’s unemployment rate is down to 5.4 percent.
The state Labor Department says the April jobless rate announced Friday is down four-tenths of a percent from March. It’s also an improvement from the April 2016 rate of 5.8 percent.
Alabama followed a national trend with the improvement. But the state’s unemployment rate is still well above the U.S. unemployment rate of 4.4 percent, which is at a 10-year low.
The state number represents 119,256 jobless people in the state, but nearly 2.1 million are working.
Shelby County in metro Birmingham has the state’s lowest unemployment rate at 3.3 percent. Wilcox County in rural west Alabama is worst at 11.7 percent.
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