Lancaster County's jobless rate jumped to a 15-year high in October, providing further evidence of a gasping economy, the state reported today.

The local jobless rate leaped to 4.7 percent from September's 4.4 percent according to the state Department of Labor & Industry report.

It was the worst unemployment rate here since March 1993, when a 4.7 percent rate also was recorded, L&I records show.

With that exceptionally large month-to-month change, the unemployment rate here decayed faster than the rates in some other metropolitan areas of Pennsylvania.

Consequently, the local rate — usually best or second-best among the rates of the state's 14 metro areas — sank to third-best in October.

State College, at 4.5 percent, and Lebanon, at 4.6 percent, both had better unemployment rates, L&I said.

The last time Lancaster County's rate ranked third-best among the state's metro areas was June 2006, New Era files show.

Despite its atypical deterioration, the local rate remained significantly better than the statewide average of 5.8 percent and the national average of 6.5 percent.

It also stayed well below the worst  of the metro-area rates. That position was held by Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, which posted a 6.8 percent rate.

Taking a closer look at the local jobless rate, it now has been at 4.0 percent or higher for five consecutive months.

The county hasn't seen an extended period of unemployment in that range since a 12-month stretch from late 2002 through late 2003, L&I records show.

But even that lengthy stretch did not bring unemployment this severe. During that time, the jobless rate peaked at 4.4 percent, markedly less than the current rate of 4.7 percent.

Pushing the jobless rate that high in October was an increase of 600 people  without jobs to 12,800. At the same time, the number of people with jobs fell by 2,200 to 262,600.

In contrast, a year earlier the jobless rate was 3.4 percent, with 9,100 people here without work.


Staff writer Tim Mekeel can be reached at tmekeel@LNPnews.com or 481-6030.