And some north Alabama workers are commuting to auto jobs here because work is even scarcer closer to their homes, even with recent mass layoffs at the General Motors assembly plant in Spring Hill.
In 2009, every Southeastern state lost jobs, with the housing collapse in Florida and a steep decline in manufacturing in Alabama and South Carolina sending unemployment rates in those three states zooming up more than in any other Southern states over the past year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The Tennessee jobless rate peaked at 10.9 percent in December after five months of trending downward. The statewide rate didn't reach single digits.
RelatedPoverty rate hits 17.5 percent in NashvilleMap: Unemployment varies in SoutheastWith nearly 90,000 net job losses last year, Tennessee trailed Florida, Georgia and North Carolina in number of lost jobs in a 12-state Southern region. Tennessee had the fifth-highest unemployment rate among that group.
With Tennessee faring somewhat better than Florida, Tom Mikulski opted to move here after he was laid off from his management job at DHL shipping in Orlando, Fla., last June.
"Tourism and everything it supports was way down in Orlando, and opportunities in my field of transportation were not there," said Mikulski, who spent four weeks job hunting in Florida before moving inland to the Nashville area.
Nashville's cost of living figures to be lower than Orlando's, he said, and the labor market looked much healthier. In midsummer, Davidson County's unemployment rate was 9.2 percent, compared with Orlando's 11.1 percent at the time, and the jobless rate here remains better.
Meanwhile, Louisiana, Arkansas and Virginia have fared reasonably well by comparison, according to the latest employment statistics.
(2 of 4)Unemployment rate improves in TennesseeReal Estate Outlook: Housing Recovery
