U.S. State Unemployment Rates Move Lower, Some Sharply

The overall U.S. unemployment rate fell sharply last month to 6.1%, a six-year low, from 10.0% at its late-2009 peak. There continues to be great variation amongst individual states, but a declining trend is evident most everywhere. Mississippi's unemployment rate recently backed up to be the country's highest at 7.9%, but that remained below the 11.0% high reached in early-2010. Nevada's rate has gone nowhere but down to 7.7% from a high of 13.9% in 2010. The country's largest states also realized great improvement in labor market conditions. California's comparatively high 7.4% jobless rate was sharply below the 2010 high of 12.3%. Unemployment in Illinois of 7.1% remained  high, but down from the peak of 11.4%. The jobless rate in Texas was down to 5.1% from its 2010 high of 8.3%. In Tennessee, last month's 6.6% rate was up a bit from the recent 6.3% low, but still compared favorably to the 2009 high of 11.0%. New York's unemployment rate of 6.6% was a recovery low and compared to the 2009 peak of 8.9%.

Amongst mid-sized states, Michigan's improvement in joblessness recently paused with the rate hovering near 7.5%. That remained, however, nearly half the 14.2% peak in 2009. Florida's 6.2% rate of joblessness has been stable in 2014 but compared favorably to 11.4% at the 2009 peak. In Virginia, the jobless rate recently backed up to 5.3% from a 4.9% low but was below the 7.4% peak reached late in 2009. Amongst smaller states, Vermont's 3.5% unemployment rate also is up off the 3.3% low but was less than half the high of 7.2% while Connecticut saw its rate move straight downward to 6.7% from a 9.5% high. North Dakota's rate at 2.7% also is little-changed during the last nine months but was down versus the 2009 high of 4.2% and Nebraska's fell to 3.7% from the 4.9% peak.

The unemployment rate figures in individual metropolitan areas continued, in most circumstances, to differ widely from the state numbers. Florida's 6.2% unemployment rate was well below the 7.2% in the Miami metro area, although Miami's rate was down from 12.4% in 2010. Michigan's 7.5% unemployment rate also was under the 8.4% jobless rate around Detroit. In 2009 it reached 16.0%. New York state's 6.6% unemployment rate stood below the 7.9% in New York City while California's 7.4% rate was under the 8.1% around Los Angeles. Also, Ohio's 5.5% rate was well below Cleveland's of 6.8%. Close to one another were the Illinois unemployment rate of 7.1% and the 6.9% rate around Chicago. Working the other way were Washington state's 5.8% jobless rate which exceeded Seattle's 4.8%.

State unemployment figures are available in Haver's EMPLR database.