Statewide unemployment inched upwards during the final month of 2020, according to newly released data from the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development (TDLWD).
The preliminary, seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for December 2020 is 6.4%, an increase of 1.2 percentage points from November’s revised rate of 5.2%. Tennessee’s latest jobless statistic remains below the national unemployment rate.
Unemployment across the state has fluctuated since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. It reached its all-time high of 15.5% in April 2020 and is currently just over 3 percentage points higher than the state’s pre-pandemic unemployment rate.
Nationally, seasonally adjusted unemployment was unchanged between November and December, holding steady at 6.7%.