State Labor Markets in July 2022
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State labor market results in June were generally strong. While 20 states had statistically significant increases in payrolls—led by Hawaii's 1.3 percent increase—2 saw significant declines. The outliers were Kentucky and Tennessee, and one suspects the flooding in that part of the nation played a role. Elsewhere, gains were more uniform. After Hawaii, the largest increases were .9 percent in Missouri and Arkansas. The largest absolute gain was California's 84,800. Over the last year all states had at least point increases in payrolls, though in a handful the gains weren't statistically significant. Alaska, Kansas, Vermont, and Wisconsin were the only states with increases less than 1 ½ percent. Texas's 5.8 percent gain (736,700) was the largest, though the absolute increase in California was very slightly larger.
Fourteen states, plus DC, saw declines in their unemployment rates in July, led by a .4 percentage point drop in New Mexico. Indiana, Montana, and Nebraska had statistically significant modest increases. DC's rate in July was 5.2 percent, and Minnesota's was 1.8 percent. The other 49 states had rates in the 2.0 to 4.5 percent range.
Puerto Rico's labor market also showed some improvement. The island gained 7,500 jobs (.8 percent) in July, and the unemployment rate fell to 5.9 percent—another record low for this series, which starts in 1976, and the first time the rate has been under 6 percent. However, the drop in the unemployment rate from June to July was an artifact of a decline in the labor force, as resident employment declined.
Charles Steindel
AuthorMore in Author Profile »Charles Steindel has been editor of Business Economics, the journal of the National Association for Business Economics, since 2016. From 2014 to 2021 he was Resident Scholar at the Anisfield School of Business, Ramapo College of New Jersey. From 2010 to 2014 he was the first Chief Economist of the New Jersey Department of the Treasury, with responsibilities for economic and revenue projections and analysis of state economic policy. He came to the Treasury after a long career at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where he played a major role in forecasting and policy advice and rose to the rank of Senior Vice-President. He has served in leadership positions in a number of professional organizations. In 2011 he received the William F. Butler Award from the New York Association for Business Economics, is a fellow of NABE and of the Money Marketeers of New York University, and has received several awards for articles published in Business Economics. In 2017 he delivered Ramapo College's Sebastian J. Raciti Memorial Lecture. He is a member of the panel for the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia's Survey of Professional Forecasters and of the Committee on Research in Income and Wealth. He has published papers in a range of areas, and is the author of Economic Indicators for Professionals: Putting the Statistics into Perspective. He received his bachelor's degree from Emory University, his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and is a National Association for Business Economics Certified Business EconomistTM.