Unemployment Is Only 4.3% in This State

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jul 18, 8:40AM EDT

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Unemployment Is Only 4.3% in This State — © alexeys / Getty Images

One of America’s poorest states had the lowest unemployment rate in June, based on data from the State Employment and Unemployment Summary published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The jobless rate in Kentucky was only 4.3%. The median household income in the state is $50,247, which puts it 44th among all states by that measure.

The national unemployment rate in June was 11.1%, which is higher than the worst level in the Great Recession at 10% in October 2009. That year, some economists said the figure was among the greatest job calamities since the late 1920s and early 1930s.

Why is Kentucky’s rate at a level that would be considered strong in an economic recovery? Several parts of the Kentucky economy have not been hard hit, at least for now. The BLS pointed out that in June that “employment in leisure and hospitality rose sharply. Notable job gains also occurred in retail trade, education and health services, other services, manufacturing, and professional and business services.”

Jobs in education, manufacturing and health services make up Kentucky’s major employment components, which gives it an advantage over other states.

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The job loss this year has been made up largely of low wage workers, often with poor educational attainment. In Kentucky, 24.8% of workers have a bachelor’s degree. The figure is 33.4% nationwide. The poverty rate is just 16.9%, compared to the national rate of 17.2%.

The jobless rate is also good in Kentucky’s largest cities. Between them, the Louisville-Jefferson County and Lexington-Fayette metropolitan statistical areas have 45% of Kentucky’s workforce.

Because of the makeup of Kentucky’s workforce, its jobless rate likely will remain below the national average.
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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.