October. That's the lowest since June 2009, when the rate stood at 5.6 percent, and the first time it dropped below 6 percent since September of that year, when it was 5.9 percent.

Teresa Wahlert, director of Iowa Workforce Development, said "the Iowa economy appears to be on firmer ground than it was during the third quarter."

"The large drop in the November unemployment rate, along with an increase in total employment and further expansion in manufacturing, seems to confirm that the recovery has stepped up a notch," Wahlert said in a statement.

November's rate was also lower than the 6.2 percent recorded in November 2010. Nationally, the jobless rate in November dropped to 8.6 percent from 9 percent in October and was lower than the 9.8 percent posted in November 2010.

About 1,100 manufacturing jobs were created last month in Iowa, with about 3,700 jobs being added overall. Growth was also seen in the financial industry, trade and transportation. The leisure and hospitality industries and government shed jobs, Tuesday's report showed.

The number of unemployed people in Iowa fell from 98,700 in October to about 95,000 in November, marking the second consecutive month fewer than 100,000 Iowa residents were out of work. More than 103,000 people in Iowa were jobless in November 2010.

The Iowa Policy Project, a nonpartisan think tank based in Iowa City, said the decline in unemployment distracts from what it sees as a still-sluggish Iowa economy.

"We're only increasing jobs at a pace of 1,400 a month in 2011 — nowhere near the pace needed to wipe out our 43,000-job deficit from mid-2008 in a reasonable amount of time," the group said in a statement Tuesday.

It cited the continued loss of government jobs in 2011 as an example of the persistent effect of the sluggish economy, but did note that growth in manufacturing is a "bright spot, potentially — up 7,900 over the last year."

Courtesy Google News

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