April’s unemployment figures have been released by Iowa Workforce Development. In Marion County, we are seeing a decrease in unemployment since last year. We have an unemployment rate of 5.1%, down .7% from last year’s unemployment rate for April. Iowa’s unemployment rate as a whole is is at 5.1% as well, down from 5.9% last year and down .1% from last March. Iowa is still 3% lower than the national figure of 8.1%. Construction work is making up a large portion of the unemployment decreases, with a nearly 10,000 increase in construction jobs from March.