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BATON ROUGE – Louisiana’s unemployment rate continued to drop to the lowest level in nearly a decade.

The statewide unemployment rate dropped to 4.6 percent last month, marking the eighth consecutive month that saw a reduction in the number of unemployed Louisiana citizens.

The last time the state’s unemployment rate was this low was in March of 2008, according to Governor John Bel Edwards.

“Louisiana’s economy continues to improve, and we are making tremendous progress in putting our people back to work,” Edwards said. “We are also seeing signs of wage growth in a number of sectors of employment. These unemployment figures are evidence that we are headed in the right direction, but I know we still have a lot of work left to do. If we can continue to make critical investments in workforce development and education, I am confident that we will be able to attract more business opportunities to our state like DXC Technology – the largest economic development project in the state’s history and the second best project in the entire country in 2017.”

Louisiana currently ranks 37th in the nation, up from 46th in January 2016, when Edwards took office.