The economic recovery is well enough underway that unemployment has finally dropped below 5.8%. It fell to that level in October. However, the recovery is very uneven. Eight states still have unemployment higher than 7%, and so does the District of Columbia. In some of these states, the situation is much worse.

The eight states are California (7.3%), Georgia (7.7%), Michigan (7.1%), Nevada (7.1%), Mississippi (7.6%), Oregon (7.0%), Rhode Island (7.4%) and Tennessee (7.1%).

Among the reasons some of these states were hit so hard is that they had one dominant industry that collapsed during the recession. This is true of Michigan and the auto industry. Nevada was badly hurt by a downturn in gambling. Rhode Island is home to a number of financial companies. Portions of inland California are home to cities where unemployment is still over 10%, to a large extent due to the collapse of the agriculture sector.

Several of the states also have extremely large cities with high unemployment. The population size of these cities is enough to weigh on the jobless rate in their home states. The Los Angeles MSA has an unemployment rate of 8.0%. Eight other cities in California have unemployment rates of 9% or better

Detroit’s unemployment rate is 8.3%, and the unemployment rate in Memphis is 7.9%. The jobless rate in Brunswick, Ga., is 8.3%, and in Dalton, Ga., it is 9%. Eight cities in Georgia have unemployment rates over 8%.

Furthermore, the unemployment rate in Providence is 7.5%.

Notes: Unemployment by MSA from BLS, unemployment by state from BLS, BLS summary of state jobless rates and BLS unemployment rates by region.

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