By Bill Zeeble, KERA News
Dallas, TX –
The Texas unemployment rate has risen yet again for the month of October. It inched up from a decades-high 8.2 percent in September to 8.3 percent for October.
The rate in Dallas/Fort Worth & Arlington is also 8.3 percent, the same as last month.
Still, Texas Workforce Commission Chairman Tom Pauken says the state added nearly 42 thousand jobs and explained the apparent contradiction this way.
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Chairman Pauken: Because you have more people coming into Texas. There are jobs being created but there's still a higher percentage of unemployment relative to the population. It looks to me like it's stabilizing in terms of unemployment in Texas.
Pauken is watching initial unemployment claims, filed by people newly out of work. He says just last week, that number fell. Previously, it had been rising.