How's Your State Doing?
So, how bad is the unemployment rate around the US? At some point during the pandemic, I've read how it was at Great Depression level (over 20%). That number has since came down. In fact, if you searched around the internet, it would say it's around 10%. And from various sources, they say that a normal rate is around 4%- 6%.
For reference, please visit https://www.bls.gov/web/laus/laumstrk.htm
Checking out the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, it's easy to see that not all states are in the same boat. Some of them have stayed pretty consistent in terms of the unemployment rate. The pandemic definitely affected them, but not as much compared to others.
While the rate for my state (Utah) seems to be in the healthy range, I can't say it hasn't affected people I know. I have friends in the medical field that fell under hard times due to COVID. Once you get out of the Rockies, that rate starts to pick up.
On the other end, we have the states that have rate much higher than the current average of 10%. The bottom 10 starts out at rank 42 because Alaska and Rhode Island tied at rank 40.
Looking at the names alone, I can already see someone extrapolate based on red/blue states. It would also seem that areas with stricter lockdown policies has greater unemployment.
It's worth noting that the stats here do take a person's residency into account. So, a person may work in another state, but their legal residence is elsewhere.
This is not so uncommon back where I'm from in the East Coast. I've had teachers who lived in Delaware and came to work in Pennsylvania . There were folks from Maryland and New Jersey there as well. As to how much that'd skew the statistics? Who knows.
Bottom line is, where I'm living is doing okay for the moment. Is yours?
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Looks good here.
The highways are plenty busy.
Yeah, traffic has been back to normal in my state for a while.
Might not be able to say for anywhere in the US, but it's pretty bad around here. There's no exact figure but I'd reckon somewhere around 60%. It's around 40 even before the pandemic.
Dang, that high?
What do people even do then?
Most do petty trades and menial jobs and live from hands to mouth.
Sad.
Not to bad for Alaska considering that tourism is pretty much non-existent this year.
We were on a nice steady decline in the unemployment rate, until tourist season did not materialize.
Being just outside of the top 10 unemployed state is pretty bad.
Unless you were expecting worse?
I'm retired, so it only effects me in price increases and lack of choice. In the 90's Alaska unemployment was 10% or more. Prior to 2016 it was in the 7.4% range, and then with Trump in 2018 around 6.1%, Tourism is a big part of the Alaska Economy, So the higher seasonal number jump was not that surprising, with tourism being pretty much shut down this year. A good example would be if they closed all the ski resorts in Colorado for the entire winter, it would have a similar increase in the unemployment numbers for Colorado. Hopefully it is only this year, and next will be back to normal, but I kind of doubt that things will get back to normal.
And thus we see that historical context matters.
Not surprised to see Michigan in that list. We definitely have been locked down quite a bit more and we have a large number of manufacturing jobs that have been deemed non essential.
That can't be good for everyone's morale.
Moved to Florida and pretty much isolating ourselves. Most of the people I know here (my wife is from Jacksonville) did not lose their job.
Gonna try to keep that NY job until I can. I definitely noticed that less recruiters than usual reach out in my inbox..