THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, August 6, 1996 TAG: 9608060368
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LON WAGNER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 38 lines
College and high school students looking for summer jobs pushed Virginia's unemployment rate higher in June, but the state still recorded its lowest June jobless rate since 1990, the Virginia Employment Commission reported Monday.
Job-hunting students were partly responsible for a jump in Hampton Roads' jobless rate from 4.7 percent in May to 5.5 percent in June, which was only slightly above last June's 5.4 percent.
``It's always a matter of who walked in front of the camera on a particular day,'' said VEC Senior Economist William F. Mezger. ``It's so small a variance, I don't see how you can attach any significance to it.''
Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia have higher proportions of students than the other metropolitan areas in the state, Mezger said. Therefore, those regions are more likely to be affected during the summer. But this summer the impact may have been less than in other years.
``This year, it appears they have had a better time finding work than they have in the past six years,'' Mezger said of students.
In fact, the service sector led the job growth as theme parks and hotels added workers during summer's first month. Service sector employment rose 16,600 in June, to 919,500. Construction employment rose by 4,200 to 176,800, the highest number of construction jobs recorded since October 1990.
Other signs also suggest the state's economy is humming. Employment - up 25,400 to 3,143,100 - reached an all-time high for the second month in a row.
The state's production workers, on average, earned a record weekly wage of $516.01, which was up $14.36 per week from the previous month. The hourly pay of nonsalaried workers also recorded its highest mark ever: $12.17, a 14-cent jump from May.
``There's a lot of talk about how wages aren't keeping pace with inflation,'' Mezger said. ``Of course, inflation's been low for the last couple of years and wages have been going up slowly all along.''
KEYWORDS: UNEMPLOYMENT by CNB