The Republic staff and wire reports
One in 10 Bartholomew County adults in June was looking for a job. The unemployment rate rose to 9.9 percent, the highest in about 25 years.
More than 4,000 Bartholomew County residents were looking for a job last month, more than double the number of jobseekers in June 2008.
The number of people with a job, year-over-year, fell by nearly 1,400.
The data's sole bright spot: For the first time in nine months, the year-over-year unemployment rate increase was smaller than the previous month.
Since September, the year-over-year difference had risen steadily from 1.3 percentage points (the rate was 4.5 percent in September, compared to 3.2 percent in September 2007) to 5.3 percentage points in May (the rate was 9.2 percent in May, compared to 3.9 percent in May 2008).
In June, the year-over-year difference was 5.2 percentage points.
Nonetheless, the local job market is unlikely to recover quickly, because small local businesses still are closing, and large companies still are shedding workers.
Ahlemeyer Farms Old Time Bakery and Aver's Pizza closed within the last month, and Columbus Components Group and Toyota have cut or laid off hundreds.
And although Cummins has recalled 400 laid off employees to produce engines for the Dodge Ram pickup truck, the Midrange Engine Plant will be idled again for two months beginning in August.
All nearby counties also reported rates that were higher than a year earlier. Rates in Shelby, Jennings, Jackson and Decatur counties exceeded 10 percent. Brown's was 9.2 percent. Johnson's ranked 12th-best in the state with 8.5 percent.
State rate rises, too
Indiana's unemployment rate ticked up to 10.7 percent in June, a tenth-ofa-percentage point increase from the previous month but nearly twice the rate from a year ago.
The Indiana Department of Workforce Development said Friday that Indiana reported the smallest unemployment increase among its neighboring states despite continued job losses in the manufacturing sector.
Indiana's rate climbed from 10.6 percent in May and 5.6 percent in June 2008. The last time the state's jobless rate reached 10.7 percent was July 1983.
Howard County again posted the state's highest rate: 19.7 percent. The Kokomo area had several factories idled during Chrysler's bankruptcy.
Michigan continued to have the nation's highest unemployment rate at 15.2 percent for June. The national rate was 9.5 percent.
"We are starting to see a few encouraging signs despite continued losses in the manufacturing sector," Workforce Development Commissioner Teresa Voors said. "Indiana added 5,000 service jobs last month and the number of Help Wanted ads has grown for the past two months; new job postings declined nationally in June."
But Indiana House Speaker B. Patrick Bauer, D-South Bend, saw the news as less encouraging.
"We have reached the point where increases in the unemployment rate are hailed as positive, simply because they didn't go up as much as originally thought or that neighboring states had it worse.
"'At least we're not Michigan' is not the most inspiring thing to tell those 345,000 Hoosiers," he added, referring to the number of out-of-work residents reflected in the June rate.
Nine counties, mostly north of Interstate 70, reported preliminary rates of 15 percent or higher: Howard, Elkart, Noble, Miami, Tipton, LaGrange, Blackford, Starke and Fayette in east central Indiana.