Greene County has seen an overall decrease in unemployment since the beginning of the year.

According to Iowa Workforce Development, the percentage of unemployment in the county has decreased from 6.1% in January to 5% in July.  There is also a slight decrease this month compared to a year ago in July from 5.3% down to 5% overall.

Even though Western Iowa Advantage reports that Greene County has the highest unemployment rate compared to the other counties in its region, Adair (3.7%), Audubon (4.9%), Carroll (3.4%), Crawford (4%), Guthrie (4.3%), Ida (3.8%) and Sac (3.8%), there are 25 counties who have a higher rate and Chamber Executive Director Ken Paxton says in the big picture, 5% is relatively small.

“To be honest, our unemployment numbers are really extremely low.  The good news for that is to fill all these jobs that the casino and Hy-Vee and businesses, we’re going to need to recruit people into the county and that’s a good thing.”

He explains one way to help support future job creation within the county.

“We have what’s called a housing committee meeting and we need to start talking about some multi-unit housing projects and some things to be able to be supportive.  We’re in a really good situation to draw demand from surrounding counties and surrounding regions.  We need to increase our population to help support these things.”

The national unemployment rate is 7.4% at the end of July.