Unemployment Could Rise to 25% in Some States

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Apr 11, 9:07AM EDT · Published Apr 10, 6:13AM EDT

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Unemployment Could Rise to 25% in Some States — © artisteer / Getty Images

JPMorgan researchers forecast that GDP could drop by 40% in the second quarter. The jobless rate nationwide could rise to 20%. That means some states, with workforces in the hardest-hit industries, could post unemployment figures of 25%. That would be worse than the 24.9% nationwide jobless figure in 1933 at the trough of The Great Depression.

247 Wall St. has examined the states with the worst jobless claims numbers since mid-March. This shows the particularly difficult vulnerability of the employment markets in each of them. They are much worse than the national trend and could continue to be over the next several months.

In its “Every State’s Unemployment Claims Since COVID-19 Shut the Economy Down”, 24/7 editors wrote,

Mid-March marked a turning point in the coronavirus outbreak in the United States. President Donald Trump officially declared a national emergency on March 13, 2020. Two days later, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised Americans to avoid gatherings of 50 people. Over the next three weeks, restrictions tightened, the numbers of infections and deaths from the disease soared, and more than 15 million Americans lost their jobs.

Among the worst:

In Hawaii, unemployment claims since mid-March were 110,495 or 16.6% of the labor force.

In Kentucky, unemployment claims since mid-March hit 279,307 or 13.6% of the labor force.

In Louisiana, unemployment claims since mid-March were 272,823 or 13.1% of the labor force.

In Michigan unemployment claims since mid-March hit 817,185 or 16.6% of the labor force.

In Nevada, unemployment claims since mid-March were 244,105 or 15.9% of the labor force.

In Pennsylvania, unemployment claims since mid-March were 1,065,846 or 16.5% of the labor force.

In Rhode Island, unemployment claims since mid-March hit 91,902 or 16.6% of the labor force.

In contrast, the state hit least hard in South Dakota, unemployment claims since mid-March reached only 16,478, a low 3.6% of the labor force.

During The Great Recession and recovery that followed there was strong evidence of vastly different employment from state to state. In October 2009, the national unemployment rate was 10.2%. In some states, it was over 50% higher than that. When the jobless rate dropped to 3.5% recently, in some states it was just above 2%.

All states are not created equal, particularly when measured by employment compared to the rest of the country.

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.