Print edition: 
The Wichita metro area unemployment rate continued its slow decline in December, dropping to 6.9 percent, the lowest level in nearly three years.
The rate fell from 7.1 percent in November and was considerably lower than the 7.7 rate of December 2010, according to the Kansas Department of Labor.
Because the rate is not adjusted for seasonal changes, Christmas hiring probably contributed to the December rate somewhat. It also may mean a sharp, if temporary, uptick in unemployment in January as retailers lay off extra help. In the last two years, the January rate jumped close to a full percentage point over the December rate.
Even so, said economist Malcolm Harris, a finance professor at Friends University, the downward trend is unmistakable. The area hit a peak of 10.7 percent in July 2009 and has been drifting very slowly down since then.
The December number is the 20th month in a row that the rate was lower than the same month of a year earlier.
“All in all, a pretty comfortable trend,” Harris said. “We’re continuing to see strength in the local economy. I think a lot of it is from the smaller firms. The big companies make the headlines, but the little companies do the hiring.”
One of those firms is MHI, a Wichita company that designs and supplies products nationally and internationally for mothers with small children and safety products for the elderly.
Owner Martin Park said he is reasonably optimistic about the economy. His clients, the nation’s largest retailers, are seeing rising sales.
He understands the pall the Boeing announcement cast over Wichita, but even here, he said, conditions are improving. Boeing announced earlier this month that it would close its facility here, which employs about 2,100 people.
“In the light of Boeing it’s a tricky thing to say, but things do seem to be better on a national level and people are going to be hiring,” he said. “And there is still a lot of good stuff happening in Wichita, with local companies hiring.”
That includes his. He added a fifth person to his company last year and expects to hire again this year. A new employee is needed to develop new products, a vote of confidence in the general direction of the economy, he said.
However, Wichita remained the worst metro area in the state, as it has since early 2009, because of its reliance on the aircraft industry. The aircraft workforce remains more than 25 percent below its 2008 peak.
Elsewhere in Kansas, Topeka had an unemployment rate of 6.4 percent and the Kansas side of metro Kansas City was at 6.2 percent. The state’s college towns did better, with Lawrence at 5.0 percent and Manhattan at 4.7 percent.
The state’s overall unemployment rate was 5.9 percent.
All rates were improvements from November and year-ago rates.
