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We’re going to walk through the unemployment rate for the past 11 years.
The data starts at the beginning of 2011, after the worst of the great recession when the unemployment rate had already hit the WORST point of 10.6% in January 2010, but was still NOT good by any means. Having about 10 states above 10% unemployment is horrible.
Nevada’s unemployment rate of over 13% is the highest we’ll see for a while as the economy improves slowly for almost the next decade.
Quick Unemployment Timeline
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In June 2013, Nevada falls below 10% which
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Jan 2014, every state is below 9%.
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July 2014, every state is below 8%.
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And in July 2015, every state fell below 7%, which marks a strong economy. It took a while and still wasn’t great for everyone, but definitely solid.
marks every state now being below 10%. A solid, if underwhelming, milestone.
How The Unemployment Graph Works
Now at this point we can explain the graph a bit. The darker the color the worse the unemployment rate. Normally, 10%+ unemployment is awful. 7%+ is not good. And sub 5% is fantastic.
The colors of the bars depict the absolute severity of unemployment. The current color of any bar compares to the worst unemployment rate in the past decade. The colors are not comparing the states to each other in that particular snapshot, per se.
We show the unemployment rates of the 15 worst states for each month as they change over the past decade.
General Unemployment Trends
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The last 6 years under Obama and the first three under Trump saw a slow, methodical improvement in the job market and a reduction in the unemployment rate.
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If there’s any real trend in the data here it’s that southern states and Alaska kind of have the “worst” unemployment rate for a while. But nothing really stands out.
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Every state had just cleared the 6% unemployment rate by February 2020.
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Nevada sets a new record with 29.5% unemployment for a month in April 2021, up 23 percentage points from the month prior.
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And now, as unemployment rates come back to “normal”, states with more restrictions and a reliance on tourism continue to lag behind the rest of the country’s unemployment rate.
Current Unemployment Rate By State (April 2021)
| State | Unemployment Rate |
|---|---|
| Alabama | 3.6% |
| Alaska | 6.7% |
| Arizona | 6.7% |
| Arkansas | 4.4% |
| California | 8.3% |
| Colorado | 6.4% |
| Connecticut | 8.1% |
| Delaware | 6.4% |
| District of Columbia | 7.5% |
| Florida | 4.8% |
| Georgia | 4.3% |
| Hawaii | 8.5% |
| Idaho | 3.1% |
| Illinois | 7.1% |
| Indiana | 3.9% |
| Iowa | 3.8% |
| Kansas | 3.5% |
| Kentucky | 4.7% |
| Louisiana | 7.3% |
| Maine | 4.8% |
| Maryland | 6.2% |
| Massachusetts | 6.5% |
| Michigan | 4.9% |
| Minnesota | 4.1% |
| Mississippi | 6.2% |
| Missouri | 4.1% |
| Montana | 3.7% |
| Nebraska | 2.8% |
| Nevada | 8% |
| New Hampshire | 2.8% |
| New Jersey | 7.5% |
| New Mexico | 8.2% |
| New York | 8.2% |
| North Carolina | 5% |
| North Dakota | 4.2% |
| Ohio | 4.7% |
| Oklahoma | 4.3% |
| Oregon | 6% |
| Pennsylvania | 7.4% |
| Rhode Island | 6.3% |
| South Carolina | 5% |
| South Dakota | 2.8% |
| Tennessee | 5% |
| Texas | 6.7% |
| Utah | 2.8% |
| Vermont | 2.9% |
| Virginia | 4.7% |
| Washington | 5.5% |
| West Virginia | 5.8% |
| Wisconsin | 3.9% |
| Wyoming | 5.4% |
Author
Chris Kolmar is a co-founder of Zippia and the editor-in-chief of the Zippia career advice blog. He has hired over 50 people in his career, been hired five times, and wants to help you land your next job. His research has been featured on the New York Times, Thrillist, VOX, The Atlantic, and a host of local news. More recently, he's been quoted on USA Today, BusinessInsider, and CNBC.
