This State’s Unemployment Rate Is Only 4.5%

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Aug 22, 8:53AM EDT

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

This State’s Unemployment Rate Is Only 4.5% — © George Frey / Getty Images News via Getty Images

Economists usually count a jobless rate of 5% as “full employment.” A certain number of people who are out of jobs find new ones very quickly. They often are not captured in the official numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), which reports the data. That made the 3.5% unemployment number through much of last year all the more extraordinary. As unemployment has soared in the United States due to the COVID-19 crisis, two states have had a jobless rate of under the 5% number. The lowest of these in July was Utah at 4.5%, against the national rate of 10.2%. Utah essentially has full employment in a period in which the country is in the midst of the worst job crisis in nearly a century.

The BLS has released its “State Employment and Unemployment July 2020” report. Utah was followed by Nebraska at 4.8% and Idaho at 5.0%. At the other end of the spectrum, Massachusetts had a rate of 16.1%, just below the New York number of 15.9%.

The BLS does not give reasons for the state unemployment rates. A look at the composition of the jobs in Utah has a few clues about why its rate is so low.

One industry in Utah is in trouble, which means several others have to be very strong for the state to post such a low figure. Part of the Utah economy relies on tourism, which has been undercut by the sharp drop in travel due to the pandemic. The two other largest industries in Utah are agriculture and mining, each of which has weathered the jobs catastrophe fairly well.
[nativounit]

Utah’s largest employers are also in sectors that have not suffered sharp layoffs. Of Utah’s seven largest employers, five are health care systems or companies. University Healthcare is the largest at 10,000, followed University of Utah Health at 7,866. Of the top 25 employers in the state, over half are in the health industry.

Other large employers also have not been affected much, if at all, by the spread of COVID-19. These include Walmart, which has thrived over the past several months, as shown by its recent earnings. Hill Air Force Base is also a large employer. So are several school systems and universities.

Unemployment in the United States will remain high for months, if not longer. Utah is fortunate to have a job market dominated by industries that are likely to continue to thrive.
[recirclink id=730661]
[wallst_email_signup]

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.