Area county unemployment rates in June decreased from a year ago, according to a state report released Wednesday.
 
New Hanover County reported an unemployment rate of 5.6 percent in June, down from 6 percent recorded in June 2014, figures from the N.C. Department of Commerce’s Labor & Economic Analysis Division showed. The county ranked 17th in unemployment of all North Carolina counties.
 
Pender County posted an unemployment rate of 6.3 percent, down from 7.1 percent in June 2014. Pender ranked 53rd in unemployment among all counties.
 
Brunswick County had an unemployment rate of 7.1 percent, a slight decrease from a rate of 7.4 percent in June 2014. Brunswick ranked 71st in unemployment in the state.
 
Though overall the unemployment rate decreased from a year ago, 95 of North Carolina’s counties saw an increase in unemployment from the month of May.
 
The rates, which are not seasonally adjusted, increased in New Hanover, Brunswick and Pender counties from May, with each county seeing a slight increase of 0.3 percentage points.
 
The statewide unemployment rate for North Carolina was 6.1 percent, a mark that was up from 5.9 percent in the month of May but showed a decrease from last year’s rate in June at 6.4 percent.

While employment numbers usually go up in the summer, the slight increase in the unemployment rate could be due to an influx of people beginning to look for work, said Adam Jones, a professor of economics at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.
 
“Typically employment increases during the summer months as agriculture, tourism and other seasonal work increases,” he said Wednesday. “However, many younger adults, along with some older workers, also begin to look for work, at which point we consider them unemployed as opposed to ignoring them if they are not in the labor force.”

The unemployment rate for the Wilmington metropolitan area, which includes New Hanover and Pender counties, was 5.7 percent in June, an increase from 5.4 percent in May but an overall decrease from last June’s rate of 6.2 percent.
 
The national unemployment rate was 5.3 percent for the month of June, down from 5.5 percent from the month of May and a decrease from a rate of 6.1 percent in June 2014, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
 
Buncombe County had the lowest unemployment rate in the state at 4.7 percent in June, while the county with highest rate of unemployment was Graham County at 12.3 percent.

The Rocky Mount metro had the highest unemployment rate of all metropolitan areas at 8.9 percent, while the Asheville metro had the lowest metropolitan unemployment rate at 5 percent.