Missouri non-farm payroll employment showed little overall change from March to April 2021, and the seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate decreased by a tenth of a percentage point.

Seasonally-adjusted employment increased by 600 jobs over the month. The state’s seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate was 4.1 percent in April, down from 4.2 percent the month before. The Missouri labor market showed an increase of nearly a quarter of a million jobs from April 2020 to April 2021.

Missouri’s smoothed seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate decreased by a tenth of a percentage point in April, dropping to 4.1 percent from the March rate of 4.2 percent. With the start of the COVID-19 pandemic now a year in the past, the April 2021 rate was 8.4 percentage points lower than the April 2020 rate. The rate had reached a low of 3.1 percent starting in July 2018 before gradually edging up to 3.5 percent by the end of 2019, and then to 3.7 percent in March 2020. The COVID-19 effect hit in April 2020, spiking the rate to 12.5 percent for that month. The rate decreased monthly for the rest of 2020, reaching 4.4 percent in December, and has continued gradually downward through the first four months of 2021.

Missouri’s unemployment rate has been below the national rate for every month since February 2020. The national unemployment rate increased from 6.0 percent in March to 6.1 percent in April 2021.