BRISTOL: The number of unemployed workers in Bristol increased by 3.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2016, according to a Tri-Cities Labor Market report by East Tennessee State University’s College of Business and Technology. Unemployment numbers fell in Johnson City by 3.7 percent and 2.6 percent in Kingsport, according to the report released Tuesday. ETSU economics professor Steb Hipple said Tuesday that Bristol’s trend is troubling. “We haven’t seen an increase in unemployed workers in several years,” he said. “I speculate what has happened is the growth in retail stores in both Bristols is attracting people into the labor market thinking they can find employment when they actually can’t—at least not yet—and that has led to the increase of unemployed workers.”
Meanwhile, the national labor market improved over the past six years, according to the report. Employment rose 1.6 percent to 152.2 million, while unemployment fell 4.5 percent to 7.2 million. And the jobless rate declined to 4.5 percent from 4.8 percent in 2015 and 5.5 percent in 2014. Hipple said the numbers can be confusing. “The current population shows there are 160.4 million Americans at work but there were 152.2 million jobs in the fourth quarter—that equates to over 8 million workers not on the rolls,” he said. “So the jobless rate is really around 9.4 percent instead of 4.5 percent.” He said once people stop looking for work they are not considered unemployed. “Since the Great Recession people have been looking for work. They can’t find it, become discouraged and stop looking,” Stipple said. “At that point, they are no longer unemployed.” He said he hopes the increase in Bristol’s unemployment numbers are “just a fourth quarter hiccup” and there will be growth in the first quarter.
