South Dakota Unemployment Rate Drops to 2.7%

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 13, 5:24AM EST · Published Jul 23, 9:20AM EDT

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South Dakota Unemployment Rate Drops to 2.7% — © Thinkstock

If economists consider a 5% unemployment rate the definition for “full employment,” then how is the unemployment rate in South Dakota defined? It was 2.7% in June, the lowest in the nation. The U.S. unemployment rate was 4.9% for June.

The state unemployment rates are lowest in the Plains states and northern New England. The only obvious thing they have in common is low population rates.

The unemployment rate in Montana was 4.2% last month. It was 3.2% in North Dakota and 3.7% in Idaho.

In New Hampshire, unemployment in June was 2.8%, the second lowest in the nation. In Vermont the figure was 3.2% and in Maine 3.7%.

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As for the rest of the country, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

Unemployment rates were significantly higher in June in 6 states, lower in 1 state, and stable in 43 states and the District of Columbia, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Sixteen states and the District had notable unemployment rate decreases from a year earlier, 2 states had increases, and 32
states had no significant change. The national jobless rate rose by 0.2 percentage point from May to 4.9 percent but was 0.4 point lower than in June 2015. Nonfarm payroll employment increased in 18 states in June 2016, decreased in 3 states and the District of Columbia, and was essentially unchanged in 29 states. Over the year, 35 states added appreciable numbers of nonfarm payroll jobs, 2 states lost jobs, and 13 states and the District were essentially unchanged.

Also:

South Dakota and New Hampshire had the lowest jobless rates in June, 2.7 percent and 2.8 percent, respectively. Alaska had the highest unemployment rate, 6.7 percent. In total, 21 states had unemployment rates significantly lower than the U.S. figure of 4.9 percent, 14 states and the District of Columbia had higher rates, and 15 states had rates that were not appreciably different from that of the nation.

Perhaps the only other thing the lowest unemployment states have in common is that they are cold in the winter.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

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.