Employment rates continue to struggle all over the country. The approximately 7.2 million people in the U.S. unemployed during the last week of August pushed the nationwide average up 3.5% week-over-week heading into the Labor Day weekend.

That added to the trend of a small overall increase in unemployment nationwide, over the past year, according to WalletHub. So, the personal finance company dug deeper and took a look at weekly claims on the state level. West Virginia was among those where unemployment claims were higher than they’d been in the previous week.

Change in unemployment claims week-over-week in West Virginia was 3.07%, but the change in unemployment claims versus the same week last year was -8.71%; change in unemployment claims year-to-date was a disturbing 7.07%, and unemployment claims per 100,000 people in the labor force was 85 (that puts us 22nd in the country for claims per 100,000 people in the labor force).

Those figures, combined with inflation and a general economic slow-down, start to paint a worrying picture for the Mountain State.

“Unemployment might begin to creep up as consumers may cut back their spending or go down market (fast casual to fast food),” said Darius Irani, vice president for public and business engagement and chief economist at the Regional Economic Studies Institute at Towson University. “We are seeing some evidence of consumers slowing down their spending, which will have a domino effect across all parts of the U.S. economy.”

We all know what happens in West Virginia when the rest of the country is experiencing falling dominoes. The full weight of the event — particularly when it comes to economic doldrums — tends to fall on us.

Lawmakers, public officials and employers had all better keep an eye on where we are and what might be coming. It’s not often we get a chance to get a jump on something like this. But if the data is giving us red flags now, it’s time to prepare; maybe even plan ways to mitigate what could be coming.

The last thing we should do is bury our heads in the sand and wait.