Delaware sees slight increase in unemployment rate

The Unemployment rate in Delaware has slightly increased, nearly returning to where it was in December of 2011 according to the Delaware Department of Labor that released its December 2012 monthly labor review today.

Area unemployment rates vary across the state though. In New Castle County, the unemployment rate in December 2011 that stood at 6.6 percent dropped five points in November 2012 but gained those points back just a month later. The City of Newark experienced the most loss and went from a 5.2 percent unemployment rate in December of 2011 to 5.6 percent within a year.

Kent and Sussex Counties also experienced an increase in the unemployment rate even though both counties had numbers drop in November of last year. Now the unemployment rate in Kent County stands at 7.3 percent and 7.6 percent in Sussex County.

However, on the bright side some industries have seen more jobs become available. In fact, over the past year, job gains were in education and health, creating at least 19-hundred positions. The transportation, warehousing and utilities fields added about one thousand jobs and Retail came in close with 900 jobs.

The largest drops were seen in construction and state government. Those industries lost more than a thousand jobs each in 2012.