National nonfarm payroll unemployment rate fell to 5.6% in December, as the nation added 252,000 jobs. However, some portions of the nation, geographically, have been left behind as their jobless rates have held at or near 7%. The recovery, to say the least, is uneven, not just state by state, but by region within some states.

The span of unemployment rates runs from 2.8% in oil-rich North Dakota to 7.2% in Mississippi. It is impossible to tell whether the rate in Mississippi has a relationship to its extremely low median household income of $47,500, its high rate of poverty or its low rate of educational attainment. Whatever the reason, Mississippi has not been pulled along as the U.S. unemployment situation has recovered faster than many economists forecast.

The unemployment rate in California is 7.0%. It is just as hard to decide why the rate is so high in what is by far the nation’s largest state by population. The median household income in California is a relatively high $67,700, compared to the national average of $54,000. However, the state might as well be broken in two as far as jobs are concerned. In the interior part of the state, well in from the Pacific coast, unemployment in some cities hovers around 10%. In places like tech-rich San Francisco and San Jose the rate is much lower. But in and around the largest city, Los Angeles, the jobless rate is 7.9%. Los Angeles has a population large enough to lift the state’s average.

The unemployment rate in Arizona is 6.7%, in Georgia 6.9%, in Louisiana 6.7%, in Nevada 6.8%, in Oregon 6.7% and in Rhode Island 6.8%.

ALSO READ: States Where the Middle Class Is Dying

The most convenient explanation for the high unemployment in these states is that, in most cases, their jobless situations were much worse than the nation’s when the unemployment rate reached 10% at the depths of the recession. That would not explain why Florida’s unemployment rate was 5.6% last month. It was badly battered by the housing price bubble explosion. Some of the cities along its east coast still have relatively high unemployment rates.

The most plausible explanation about widely varying jobless rates, and almost certainly the most accurate, is that, industry by industry and company by company, the workforces in some areas have been fortunate. In others, much less so. If that is the case, some parts of the nation have not shared in the recovery and are not likely to do so.

Thank you for reading! Have some feedback for us?
Contact the 24/7 Wall St. editorial team.