Louisiana's unemployment rate fell to 7 percent in September, as more people found jobs and some people left the labor force.
That's down from 7.4 percent in August, and the drop tied for the second largest among the states, behind South Carolina's 0.5 percentage point improvement. September was the second month in a row for unemployment to drop in Louisiana, after no improvement since January, when joblessness hit a post-recession low of 6.9 percent.
Louisiana had a 7.2 percent jobless rate in September 2011.
The number of unemployed Louisianans fell to 144,000 from 154,000 in August. In September 2011, the state had 148,000 unemployed people.
A separate survey found total Louisiana payrolls fell to 1.94 million in September, down 6,700 jobs from August. That's still 23,000 above the year-ago level.