‘One of these nice paces’ as jobs up, unemployment down

It was more of the same for Clark County’s economy in March, but that shouldn’t cause any complaints.

The county’s unemployment rate fell to 6.3 percent last month as a seasonally adjusted 600 new jobs were added, according to a state employment report released Tuesday. That’s down from 6.6 percent unemployment in February and in March 2015. The state rate stood at 5.8 percent last month.

“When we get on one of these nice paces, it just keeps going up, keeps being diverse across almost every industry, and it starts to pull down unemployment and pull people back into the labor force,” said Scott Bailey, regional economist with the state Economic Security Department.

Year-over-year, the county added 5,800 seasonally adjusted jobs, a 3.9 percent clip that continues to top the national, state and metro area growth rates.

While hundreds of jobs were added across every major sector in the past year — especially construction, transportation, business services and government — manufacturing remained flat. The sector overall lost 100 jobs between February and March, and 200 jobs were lost just in fabricated metal products in the past year, not adjusting for seasonal variations.

Trade continued to be the largest area of growth, with retailers adding a nonadjusted 1,200 jobs over the past year.