Patrick County unemployment went to 7.2% for April, 2012. It was at 8.0% in March, 2012.

Source: Martinsville Bulletin Thursday, May 31, 2012 Martinsville’s jobless rate dropped slightly in April but remained the highest in the state at 15.7 percent, according to data released Wednesday by the Virginia Employment Commission. Henry County’s rate dropped nearly half a percentage point in the same period, from 9.9 percent in March to 9.5 percent in April, the VEC reported. Patrick County’s rate improved more, from 8.0 percent in March to 7.2 percent last month. The city’s March rate was 15.9 percent. Despite the improvements, each locality’s April rate was higher than the statewide rate of 5.4 percent. Of the state’s 134 localities, Henry County had the eighth-highest jobless rate. Patrick County’s rate ranked 39th. The VEC counted 867 jobless people in Martinsville in April out of a labor force of 5,511. The labor force includes employed people and those seeking jobs. The city’s jobless rate was down considerably from April of last year, when it stood at 18.2 percent with 1,040 jobless workers reported. However, the size of the labor force also shrunk during that period. In March, the VEC reported a labor force of 5,533 in the city; in April 2011, the number stood at 5,703. Officials have said that a shrinking labor force sometimes means people have given up looking for work or have left the area to seek jobs elsewhere. In Henry County, there were 2,242 jobless workers in April out of a labor force of 23,686. That compared with 2,352 jobless workers in March, when the county’s labor force stood at 23,853. The size of the county’s labor force also was down from April 2011, when the VEC reported 24,113 in the labor force and a jobless rate of 10.7 percent. At that time, there were 2,580 jobless workers, VEC data show. In the Martinsville-Henry County micropolitan region, the unemployment rate for April was 10.6 percent, down from 11.0 percent in March and 12.1 percent in April 2011. The VEC logged 29,197 people in the combined labor force, 3,109 of them unemployed. That compared with a labor force of 29,386 in March, when 3,229 were unemployed; and 29,816 in April 2011, when the VEC counted 3,620 jobless workers. In Patrick County, the VEC reported a labor force of 8,747 in April, down from 8,766 in March and 9,093 in April 2011. The VEC showed 629 jobless workers in Patrick County last month, compared with 699 in March and 841 in April of last year. Arlington County had the state’s lowest unemployment rate in April at 3.1 percent. In addition to Martinsville, the localities with double-digit unemployment were Williamsburg, 12.6 percent; Petersburg, 11.4 percent; Danville, 10.9 percent; and Emporia, 10.3 percent.