by Ivan Foley
Landmark editor

A lot of folks in the area are looking for work, according to the latest employment figures provided by the United States Department of Labor Bureau of Statistics.

Unemployment in the Kansas City Missouri/Kansas metropolitan area stands at 8.6%. That figure is for the month of May, according to the latest regional information on the Bureau of Statistics web site.

Last year at this time, the unemployment rate in the Kansas City Mo/Ks metro area was 5.3%.
The number is even more staggering when only the Missouri side is considered. The unemployment rate for the five counties in the KCMO metro area is 9.6%.

Platte County’s unemployment rate for May was 7.6%. Ray County’s stood at 10.5%, Jackson 10.2%, while Cass and Clay both stood at 8.9%.

For a broader picture, the unemployment rate across the nation stands at 9.5% for June, the most recent information indicates from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The feds report the number of unemployed workers in the nation stands at 14.7 million.

Since the start of the recession in December of 2007, the number of unemployed in the country has increased by 7.2 million and the unemployment rate has risen by 4.6%.

The number of folks who have been unemployed for 27 weeks or more increased by 433,000 over the month of June to 4.4 million. In June, three of 10 unemployed persons had been out of work for 27 weeks or more.