MERIDIAN TOWNSHIP - The economy has hit the Lansing area hard from when it crashed in the late 2000s, and since then the job market has suffered.

Mark Reffitt, Regional Economic Analyst from the Department of Technology Management and Budget says, "There is some improvement in the Lansing figures, we see employment in the labor force up a little bit, over the year about one percent, jobless rate's holding pretty steady at 7.2 percent."

"I can say that the Lansing area is still, you know, in terms of the jobless rate is better than the state, it's been historically so, but that's not to say that there are some struggles," said Reffitt.

"You see an increase in the rate of four tenths percents it went from 7.0 to 7.4 and you think "Oh my God the jobless rate is rising" well, it rises every may, that's what it does"

Month to month data may not necessarily be the best way to assess how the economy is doing

Reffitt said, "Most of these changes you see in the monthly data for the local areas especially are just based off of seasonal changes."

Michigan jobs such as construction are dependent on good weather, and some other jobs take a summer vacation.

"You do get these temporary layoffs in state government education which is a big employer here in the Lansing area and when those people, you know, leave work seasonally there, obviously they're going to come back when the school starts back up in August and September but right now they're laid off," said Reffitt.

"We're going to see unemployment stay a little bit high, as they usually do in the summer in this area," Reffitt said. "Lately, I would say over the year there have been, we've been kind of treading water a little bit, not getting worse, but not getting a whole heck of a lot better"

"We're improving from where we were in 2009, we're not back to where we were in 2008, we're better than we were, better than what we were a few years ago for sure," said Reffitt.