Louisville's jobs numbers are below the national average(Miles Manwaring / Unsplash)The most recent national jobs report seems to suggest the labor market is finding traction. But how does the outlook in Louisville and Southern Indiana measure up?LPM’s Bill Burton spoke with the Executive Direct or of KentuckianaWorks, Michael Gritton, to learn more.This transcript was edited for clarity and length.Bill Burton: The May jobs report nationally was stronger than expected at 172,000 jobs. The March and April numbers were also revised upwards by nearly 100,000. Are the job numbers in Louisville and southern Indiana mirroring what we're seeing nationally?Michael Gritton: They're not. That's something that we should be paying attention to. You have to give the American economy credit, because with all of the uncertainty and the revolutionary that we have elected as a president, and all the changes that he and his administration are bringing about, the economy at the national level is still strong. Jobs are being created, just as you cite, but the data for our region, which includes Southern Indiana, shows that we have lost about 15,000 jobs from a year ago. We've lost about 12,000 jobs, and there are about 15,000 fewer people in the labor force, meaning they're not working and they're not looking for work anymore. That's a challenge for us.You would hope to see growth in sectors like manufacturing and construction, but in the last year both of those sectors have seen job losses, not job gains, so the regional economy is a little off from the national story, and that's not typical.BB: Then is that also reflected in the unemployment numbers? Nationally, the rate is 4.3 and Kentucky's is 4.5. What about the region?MG: What's interesting is historically the unemployment rate is still low nationally, and it's still low here because it's in the fours. But remember, the unemployment rate measures how many people are in the labor force, and they're either working or looking for work. The unemployment rate in our area is going down, but it's not going down because we're adding jobs, it's going down because people are leaving the labor market.That's not a good way to reduce the unemployment rate. You'd rather have it be going down because you're adding jobs. That's where there's a little dissonance with the national level. We're adding jobs every month, but in the last year or two, things have really slowed in our market, and that's something we're going to have to pay attention to.BB: One thing just about everybody is talking about these days is how they're being affected by the closure of part of I-65 and that includes a lot of small business owners. Right now, it's a bit early to see what kind of effect the closure has had. When might we see the numbers?MG: There's always a lag in these kinds of things. If this work is happening in the summer, you won't see it in the data until the fall, that's when we'll know whether there's an impact or not. Obviously, it's going to be sort of a transitory, temporary thing. It's a great investment when you see the pictures on the CJ website and on the LPM website. It's obvious that they needed to do something. Most of what they're repairing was built in the 50s when the interstate highway system was created. It'll be an investment over the next 70 years we'll benefit from, but of course, it's going to cause some short-term problems.BB: Over the last few months, we've seen inflation increase, largely because of the war with Iran. Is income keeping up with the inflation rate here?MG: Not exactly, not yet. Incomes are going up, but inflation is going up slightly faster. It's not a worrisome gap at the moment, and these things change from month to month, and the data takes a while to come in, and all that kind of thing. I think the bigger thing for us to be paying attention to is with the labor force shrinking, meaning the number of people that are working or looking for work. That puts a lot more pressure on us to make sure we get as many people in the labor force as we can, and of course that means we need to make sure that the young people coming out of high school and potentially going straight to work or going into college are people that we plug into the labor market. ...read more read less