(Radio Iowa) – The numbers from February show a slight drop in the state’s unemployment rate. Iowa Workforce Development spokesman Jesse Dougherty. “The unemployment rate reached two-point-nine percent (2.9%). So that’s an improvement from the three percent (3%) we saw in the first month of the year,” he says. “And with that, there were fewer Iowans who reported that they were unemployed.  The number of people in the labor force did drop around 39-hundred for February. “In looking at the data, that the vast majority of those who did leave were 16 to 24. And the majority of reason they left was for school or taking classes,” Dougherty says. “And that’s a trend that tends to trickle in, in January and February. ”

He says employers reported 11-thousand new jobs in February.  “There were several main areas accommodation and food services, that’s eating and drinking establishments, led the way with 44-hundred. We saw both education and health care add jobs, just over a thousand jobs each. We also saw construction at 11-hundred jobs as constructions going really strong, as well as a couple of other areas,” Dougherty says.

There have been some recent layoffs announced, including around 13-hundred workers at the Tyson plant in Perry. Dougherty says the impact of the Perry layoffs won’t be know for awhile as they are set for June. He says the Perry layoffs and others are a concern, but he says they are not believe to be a negative overall indicator. “You know, from what we understand right now, we think those are more about specific challenges facing certain industries, and not a widespread economic issue across Iowa,” He says. “You know it’s evidence in last month’s report, and we also saw, if you look at prior to January, which had a drop in retail coming out of the holiday, we also had beyond that there was several months of job growth overall. So we think based on that trend, you know, we’re not seeing any major issues of concern for those employers and those industries.”

The U-S unemployment rate increased to three-point-nine percent (3.9%) in February.