State officials said today Missouri’s unemployment dropped to 10.1 percent in May, down a tenth of a percentage point compared to the prior month.
Between the April 2020 preliminary and final estimates, some revisions were made to the seasonal adjustment factors for statewide employment and unemployment estimates by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. As a result of these revisions, the April 2020 seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was revised upward from 9.7 percent to 10.2 percent, while there was no revision to the not-seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate. In addition, the Missouri seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for March 2020 was revised downward to 3.9 percent, putting it below the national unemployment rate for that month.
Missouri’s labor market began a rebound in May 2020, following the major job losses in April 2020 from COVID-19 shutdowns. Employment, seasonally adjusted, increased by 32,900 jobs over the month, though still down by 260,600 over the year. Missouri’s smoothed seasonally adjusted unemployment rate decreased by a tenth of a percentage point in May 2020, decreasing to 10.1 percent from a revised April 2020 rate of 10.2 percent.
However, the May 2020 rate was more than three times higher than the May 2019 rate. The rate had reached a record low of 3.0 percent starting in July 2018, before edging up a tenth of a point in November 2018 and again in February 2018. The rate had remained at 3.2 percent through April 2019 before decreasing by a tenth of a point in May 2019. It then began a slow increase, reaching 3.4 percent in October 2019, where it remained for the remainder of 2019. The rate was steady at 3.5 percent in January and February 2020 before the COVID-19 spike began in March 2020.