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DC-area unemployment rate jumps

WASHINGTON — Ahead of Friday’s July jobs report, the Labor Department has released June unemployment data for metropolitan areas, and it shows a jump in jobless rates for both Washington and Baltimore.

The D.C. area’s unemployment rate in June was 3.7 percent, up from 3.2 percent in May, although lower than the 3.9 percent unemployment rate in June 2017.

The Baltimore metro area’s unemployment rate in June was 4.6 percent, up from 4.0 percent in May, and higher than Baltimore’s 4.5 percent unemployment rate a year earlier.

The Washington area’s civilian labor force totaled 3,464,000 in June, 47,500 more than a year earlier, for an annual job growth rate of 1.4 percent.

Among cities with a metro population of 1 million or more, Minneapolis had the lowest unemployment rate in June, at 2.8 percent. Cleveland had the highest, at 6.1 percent.

Among all metropolitan statistical areas, Ames, Iowa, had the lowest unemployment rate in June, at 2.0 percent. Yuma, Arizona, had the highest, at 19.1 percent.

America 250: How people ordered their ready-to-assemble homes from a catalog

For decades, Americans could browse a catalog, choose a home and order it by mail. Sears, Roebuck and Company was a prominent manufacturer of mail-order homes. The company sold about 70,000 to 75,000 homes from 1908 to 1940, according to the Sears Archives. Its catalogs offered more than 400 different house styles and the listed prices could range from around $200 to $6,000. Customers even had the option of designing their own home and submitting the blueprint to Sears.
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