PHOENIX — Arizona’s job market barely moved in September, with the state losing about 300 jobs from August, ABC15 reported Friday. The unemployment rate held at 4.9% for a third straight month.
That is a sharp improvement from August, when Arizona shed 5,500 jobs, the largest one-month drop since the previous October. Still, monthly job gains have been trending downward since February, when the state added 10,000.
Year over year, Arizona has about 23,000 more jobs, led by health care, professional services and construction. Hospitality employment is down nearly 8,000, with losses also in finance and government.
The picture varies by region. Flagstaff has lost nearly 4% of its jobs over the past year and Yuma is down just over 2%, with Lake Havasu City and Sierra Vista also seeing declines. Tucson, Prescott and metro Phoenix grew between about half a percent and 1%.
Zachary Milne of the Common Sense Institute told ABC15 the slowdown reflects a lack of hiring more than widespread layoffs and is not necessarily cause for alarm.
Sources: ABC15. Thee Arizona Times uses AI-assisted reporting reviewed against the sources listed.
Photo: Alan Stark / CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
