For the Wichita metropolitan area in April 2024, most employment indicators changed only slightly from the prior month. Wichita continues to perform poorly compared to its peers.
Data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, part of the United States Department of Labor, shows a mostly unchanged situation in the Wichita Metropolitan Statistical Area for April 2024.
Table 1: Comparing April 2024 to the same month of the previous year using not seasonally adjusted data from the household survey, the labor force rose, and nonfarm employment rose. The unemployment rate rose to 3.0 percent.
Click charts and tables for larger versions.
I asked ChatGPT about this table:
In April 2024, the Wichita Metropolitan Area saw some notable changes in employment compared to April 2023:
- Labor Force: The total number of people working or looking for work increased by 1,594, which is a 0.5% rise from April 2023 to April 2024.
Unemployed Persons: The number of unemployed people went up by 1,169, marking a 13.7% increase compared to the previous year. This significant rise indicates that more people were looking for jobs but hadn’t found employment.
Unemployment Rate: The unemployment rate increased from 2.6% in April 2023 to 3.0% in April 2024. This 0.4% increase represents a 15.4% relative rise, suggesting a worsening in job availability or job-seeking challenges.
Nonfarm Employment: The number of jobs in sectors other than farming grew by 6,300, a 2.0% increase from April 2023 to April 2024. This indicates that the overall job market is expanding, with more opportunities in various industries.
In summary, while the job market expanded with more employment opportunities, the increase in the number of unemployed people and the unemployment rate suggests that more people were entering the labor force or experiencing challenges finding jobs.
Table 2: Looking at April 2024 and the previous two months using smoothed seasonally adjusted data from the household survey, the labor force was steady and the number of employed people fell slightly. The unemployment rate rose by 0.1 percent to 3.0 percent.
I asked ChatGPT about this table:
In April 2024, the Wichita Metropolitan Area experienced the following employment changes:
- Labor Force: The number of people working or looking for work increased slightly by 315 from March to April 2024, a 0.1% rise.
Unemployed Persons: The number of unemployed individuals increased by 295 from March to April 2024, a 3.0% rise. This suggests more people were looking for jobs but had not yet found employment.
Unemployment Rate: The unemployment rate went up by 0.1% from March to April 2024, reaching 3.1%. This is a 3.3% relative increase, indicating a slight worsening in job availability.
Nonfarm Employment: The number of jobs in sectors other than farming remained virtually unchanged, with a negligible increase of 20 jobs from March to April 2024.
In summary, the labor force saw a small increase, and the number of unemployed individuals also rose, leading to a slight uptick in the unemployment rate. Nonfarm employment remained stable with no significant changes.
To learn more about this data and what the employer and household surveys measure, see Visualization: Employment measures. Also, see Counting jobs in Wichita.
Chart 3a, the monthly change in the labor force and employment in Wichita, shows both gains and losses, with a positive trend for the recent months.
As of April 2024, the Wichita MSA had 2,426 (0.8 percent) fewer jobs than in February 2020, the last full month before the start of the pandemic, and 44,139 (16.4 percent) more jobs than in April 2020, the first month after the beginning of the pandemic. These figures are from the smoothed seasonally adjusted series. The regular seasonally adjusted data is somewhat different, showing a gain of 8,800 jobs (2.9 percent) since before the start of the pandemic, and a gain of 52,100 (19.7 percent) after the pandemic.
Chart 3b, showing changes in labor force and employment from the same month one year ago, shows Wichita having more jobs than the year before in nearly every month, although the number has become smaller and is now near zero, meaning unchanged over the year.
Chart 6a shows changes in employment from the same month of the previous year for Wichita and the nation. The two trendlines share a similar trend.
Chart 8 shows the unemployment rate for Wichita and the nation. The rate for Wichita is always lower, by small amounts.
Chart 7 shows employment change for Wichita and a select group of peers over a period of four years, starting just before the pandemic. The metropolitan areas in this chart are near Wichita or that Wichita business leaders visited on learning expeditions. The number of jobs in Wichita is nearly unchanged. It is also below most of these peers.
Chart 8 shows changes over the month and year. In this measure, like the previous, Wichita is below nearly all of its peers.
Charts 4a and 4b show changes in jobs for Wichita and the nation over longer periods. The change is calculated from the same month of the previous year. For times when the Wichita line was above the nation, Wichita was growing faster than the nation. This was often the case during the decades starting in 1990 and 2000. Since 2010, however, Wichita has only occasionally outperformed the nation and sometimes has been far below the nation.
(For data on all metropolitan areas in the nation, see my interactive visualization Metro area employment and unemployment.)
The link to the archived version of the BLS news release for this month may be found here.
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