Region's Jobless Rates Stabilizing

Maryland's unemployment rate dropped to 6.8 percent from 6.9 percent in March and Virginia's rate remained steady at 6.8 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The District's rate returned to 9.9 percent, the level it reached in February before dipping to 9.8 percent in March.

Employment officials say it's too soon to determine whether the trends are a harbinger of recovery. The numbers could mean that employers staffed up temporarily for Easter and began summer seasonal hiring.

"It's great news and shows we aren't continuing the [upward] trend," said Andy Moser, assistant secretary of the Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation.

"At the same time, it's not time to go out and get super happy, yet," he said. "We'll have to wait to see what happens in the upcoming months."

And the slowing unemployment rate may indicate not that payrolls are growing but that more of the unemployed have stopped looking for work and are not being counted.

There is evidence that the rate may grow. Although the number of mass layoffs, involving 50 or more people, decreased across the nation, it rose in Maryland and Virginia in April. Employment officials said many of those who lost their jobs in mass layoffs in April may not be reflected in the states' unemployment rates until May.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics said there were 12 mass layoffs in Maryland last month, up from eight in March. Last month, 1,115 people lost their jobs in those layoffs, up from 531 in March.

And in Virginia, the number of mass layoffs rose to 42 in April from 14 the previous month. The number of people who lost their jobs jumped to 4,052 from 1,229. The bureau had no numbers for the District.

"One would expect that a region characterized by one of the lowest unemployment rates in the nation [5.9 percent in March, compared with 8.5 percent nationwide that month] would also be characterized by relatively low numbers of announced mass layoffs. But that is not what we observe," said Anirban Basu, chairman and chief executive of Sage Policy Group, a Baltimore economic and policy consulting firm.

"Most economists anticipate that unemployment nationally will only rise by another 1 percent or so before we achieve the peak for the cycle," he said, adding that the region is a "latecomer" to the recession. "It may be that unemployment rates will rise further than that in the Washington region before all is said and done."

The area's mass layoffs were driven largely by declines in the retail and housing sectors.