The 125th anniversary of Labor Day dawns Monday on a Columbia and Boone County whose labor forces are at record highs and whose unemployment rates are at historic lows.
Columbia workers numbered 66,402 in July; Boone county’s total was 97,185 in July, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Both the county and the city enjoyed an unemployment rate of 2.9%, below the 3.3% rate for the state of Missouri and the national rate of 3.7%. As of 2017, however, the unemployment rate for black residents in Columbia was higher, at 7.5%, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Unemployment has gradually declined in Boone County over the past 10 years. During that time, the highest number of unemployed workers was 6,629 people in July 2010; the lowest was 1,549 in October 2018, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. During this time, Boone County’s labor force rose from about 85,000 in January 2009 to about 97,000 in July 2019.
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