Small rise in employment rate

The city of Maricopa experienced a one-tenth-percentage rise in its unemployment rate from September to October, according to numbers released by the Arizona Department of Commerce.

Each month, the state looks at each city’s workforce size and compares the number of those who have collected or applied for unemployment benefits to determine the city’s unemployment percentage.

The primary factor that played a role in Maricopa’s growth in unemployment rate of 13.1 percent to 13.2 percent was an increase in the number of those collecting or filing for unemployment from 2,504 to 2,535.

Also increasing was the city’s overall workforce size from 19,161 to 19,168.

The gain in unemployment follows two consecutive months in which Maricopa had seen drops in its unemployment numbers.

The city’s average unemployment rate is 12.2 percent for the year.

Maricopa was not alone in the rise in unemployment. Pinal County as a whole increased from 11.8 percent to 11.9 percent, and the entire state saw its month-to-month number rise from 9.3 to 9.4 percent.

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