Tennessee unemployment rate falls in May after record April

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — Tennessee’s jobless rate in May fell compared with a record increase the month before, as more than 300,000 people continued to receive unemployment payouts during the new coronavirus outbreak.

The Tennessee Department of Labor & Workforce Development reported Thursday that the preliminary seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for May was 11.3 percent.

That’s a drop of 4.2 percentage points from April, when Tennessee reached its highest monthly unemployment rate ever, at 15.5 percent.

Unemployment has skyrocketed since March, when Gov. Bill Lee and city and county officials began closing or limiting access to businesses, a move that has led to more than a 600,000 new jobless claims.