The national unemployment rate remains two percentage points higher than Indiana's.

Across the country, unemployment rates skyrocketed due to COVID-19, but the South and Midwest seemed to fare a bit better.

Indiana's unemployment rate fell to 4.3 percent in December, dropping almost a full percentage point from the month before according to numbers released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics Tuesday morning.

Indiana's unemployment rate fell to 5 percent, continuing an encouraging downward trajectory since the start of the pandemic. But the number of people in the labor force is falling too -- and that's not a good sign.

Due to federal rules, as Indiana's unemployment rate drops, the Department of Workforce Development will be turning off the extended benefits program this week.

Despite the encouraging sign, the labor force -- defined as the number of people working, or looking for work -- shrunk significantly.

Although a significant amount of people found work, Indiana's labor force dropped by more than 75,000 people.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates unemployment in Indiana dropped just more than 1 percent in June from 12.3 percent to 11.2 percent.

New claims for unemployment benefits in Indiana have continued to rise slightly for three weeks in a row. At the same time, the number of people continuing to get benefits is slowly decreasing.

The number of new claims totaled 31,885 during the week of June 20, compared to an adjusted number of 24,017 the week before, the U.S. Labor Department reported Thursday. That's an increase of 7,868.