Unemployment Rate Drops in 10 States During June

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 12, 9:53AM EST · Published Jul 22, 9:07AM EDT

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Unemployment Rate Drops in 10 States During June — © Thinkstock

As the national unemployment rate hit 4.4% in June, unchanged from the month before, the number dropped in 10 states, a sign that the jobs recovery is uneven.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

Unemployment rates were lower in June in 10 states, higher in 2 states and stable in 38 states and the District of Columbia, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Twenty-seven states had jobless rate decreases from a year earlier and 23 states and the District had little or no change. The national unemployment rate, 4.4 percent, was little changed from May but was 0.5 percentage point lower than in June 2016.

There was also a wide spread in the unemployment rate among states, both well above and well below the national 4.4% average:

Colorado and North Dakota had the lowest unemployment rates in June, 2.3 percent each. The rates in North Dakota (2.3 percent) and Tennessee (3.6 percent) set new series lows. (All state series begin in 1976.) Alaska had the highest jobless rate, 6.8 percent, followed by New Mexico, 6.4 percent. In total, 19 states had unemployment rates lower than the U.S. figure of 4.4 percent, 5 states and theDistrict of Columbia had higher rates, and 26 states had rates that were not appreciably different from that of the nation.

The unemployment rate in troubled states topped 10% during the depth of the Great Recession. Even in economically “healthy” states, the figure rose well above 5%.

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Among the arguments economists make about the jobs situation is that 5% should be considered “full employment.” Some portion of the population moves from job to job at any one time and may be temporarily out of work. People take breaks from jobs for other reasons. That means a few million people could be unemployed at one time or another but not, on the whole, for any long period.

In the lowest unemployment states, employers have to find it hard to find workers in many cases. In general, this should force wages higher. On the other side of that coin, unemployment rates of above 6% should make the search for workers easier.

While the national jobs situation has improved remarkably, in places like Alaska and New Mexico, there is a long way to go before the markets are healthy.

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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.