While the national jobless rate is 3.6%, near an all-time low, some parts of the nation continue to suffer from high unemployment. At the top of this list is Yuma, Arizona. Its April figure was 13.1%, higher than the national rate of 10% at the depths of the Great Recession.
[in-text-ad]
Yuma is a reminder that the job situation in the United States is uneven, and that a problem in one city could grow to others if the economy becomes troubled. California’s interior has places where unemployment is above 6%. In El Centro, the figure is 11.7%. Other clusters of high jobless rates include places around Detroit, all of Nevada, much of southern New Jersey and most of New Mexico. Specific economic problems, often in just one industry, are the cause in most, if not all, of these cases.
[nativounit]
Layoffs already have begun in some industries. These have not swollen into geographic problems, but, if past recessions are any sign, they the will.
[wallst_email_signup]
On a positive note, the unemployment rate in several cities is below 2%. The rate is 1.3% in Minnesota’s Mankato and Rochester. Notably, these cities are in a part of the country where unemployment rates are always considerably better than in the nation as a whole.
[recirclink id=1110774]
If a recession comes, and one will, watch whether areas with high unemployment get worse. More importantly, watch the healthy regions of the country. If the job situation there worsens, the trouble is likely national.
Yuma Has an Unemployment Rate Over 13%
© DenisTangneyJr / iStock via Getty Images
Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.
McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.
His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.
A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.
TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.
McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.
Top Gaining Stocks
Top Losing Stocks