By Eric Jay Toll | AZBigMedia
It worked.
It may be hard to convince anyone among the more than 222,500 metropolitan area workers losing jobs in April that there is any good news on the job front.
A post-Great Recession economic development policy change by Arizona, Phoenix, and Valley cities about recruiting jobs succeeded. The April employment report has some bright spots in the dark clouds.
An entire year of Valley job gains was wiped out in 30 days with the metropolitan area unemployment rate climbing from a record low 3.7 percent unemployment rate in December 2019 to a never-seen-before-rise to a seasonally adjusted 12.6 percent in April 2020, according to the Arizona Office of Economic Opportunity.