Bedford, Lawrence County Gets Good Unemployment News

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(UNDATED) - Bedford finally gets a little good economic news…unemployment dropped in December of last year, and even bucked the national trend.

Unemployment in Lawrence County went from 6.3% to 5.9%, and Bedford itself went from 8.9% to 8.5%.

As a matter of fact, every county in the 8th Economic Growth Region, which includes brown, Daviess, Greene, Lawrence, Martin, Monroe, Orange and Owen Counties, went down except for 2, Brown and Martin.

Brown County saw the biggest jump going from 3.7% to 4.5%, but Martin only saw an increase of 0.1%.

Monroe dropped 0.7%, Orange dropped 0.1%, as did Owen and Daviess. Lawrence County still has the worst unemployment in the region, however, it has dropped 3 places statewide, from second to fifth.

The City of Bedford, on the other hand, has dropped from 2nd in the region to 3rd, after Nashville had a pretty awful month.

Most of the county seats saw small increases in unemployment, Bedford and Bloomington being the only exceptions. Nashville, however, jumped from 7.4% all the way to 10.0%, just a tenth behind Spencer.

However, in Nashville, the numbers are a little misleading, since the Indiana Department of Workforce Development lists the town's workforce as totaling only 390, as opposed to Bedford's more than 6,100.

That means the smallest layoff or job change has a bigger impact on Nashville's numbers.

The national unemployment level, however, jumped from 4.4% to 4.8%.

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