Montana’s unemployment rate rose for the month of August. Montana Department of Labor and Industry Senior Economist Barbara Wagner explains:

"Montana's unemployment rate is up slightly this month to 4.7 percent," Wagner said. "This isn't a huge problem because overall in the year, it's really been decreasing throughout 2014, just a little bit of uptick this month and probably continue downwards once we hit the fourth quarter."

Wagner said the uptick isn’t alarming and won’t be unless the trend continues over multiple months

"The job growth that we were showing at the start of the year, we kind of guessed that it was a little bit faster than what was the actual data," Wagner said. "I think now in this quarter we're just having a little bit of time where the time growth actually catches up to the measurement."

Even after an uptick, Montana’s unemployment rate is far below the national average of 6.1 percent.

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