The local area unemployment rate in St. Cloud reached 9.4% in January. January is always high due to post-holiday layoffs of seasonal employees, but this is clearly a record. Retail dropped 554 jobs in January, but that's barely 20% of the 2631 jobs lost in the area overall. Even areas normally not moving down in January, like health care, saw losses.

The size of the declines are worse in the Cities (that data is seasonally adjusted, unlike the St. Cloud data -- I do the SA myself.) Health sector there is at least holding some gains, but construction looks worse.

Labels: economics, Minnesota, St. Cloud