County non-seasonally adjusted unemployment rates for September 2012, released yesterday, show the rate decreased in 94 counties and increased in one.
Tennessee’s unemployment rate for September decreased to 8.3 percent, down from the August revised rate of 8.5 percent. The national unemployment rate for September 2012 was 7.8 percent, 0.3 percentage point lower than the August rate.
The state unemployment rate is seasonally adjusted while the county unemployment rates are not. Seasonal adjustment is a statistical technique that eliminates the influences of weather, holidays, the opening and closing of schools, and other recurring seasonal events from economic time series.
Coffee County’s unemployment went down from 7.8% to 7.3%. In other surrounding counties; Cannon dropped from 7.6 to 6.9, Bedford down to 8.7 from 9.2, Franklin County fell nicely from 8.3 to 7.2, Grundy came down by 1% to 8.8 and Warren County dropped to 8.6 from 9.3%.
Williamson and Lincoln Counties have the state’s lowest rate at 5.2% and Scott County the highest at 16.2% unemployment.