This Is the State With the Highest Unemployment

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jun 1, 9:01AM EDT · Published May 29, 9:15AM EDT

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This Is the State With the Highest Unemployment — © okimo / iStock via Getty Images

The first few months after the COVID-19 pandemic, American unemployment rates reached the highest levels since the Great Depression. That has improved substantially and the national jobless rate currently hovers around 6%. However, that remains much higher than in early 2020 when unemployment was at a five-decade low, at 3.5%.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics releases data on state unemployment levels each month. The most recent, STATE EMPLOYMENT AND UNEMPLOYMENT — APRIL 2021, showed the jobless level was lower in 12 states and the District of Columbia and stable in 38 states when compared to March. However, since April 2020 was the worst jobs month during the pandemic, 48 states and the District had unemployment rate decreases from a year earlier and two states were about the same. The unemployment rate nationwide for April was 6.1%

The unemployment rate across all the states and the District of Columbia always varies widely. The factors for the changes are usually easy to detect. Hawaii had the highest jobless rate for the month at 8.5%. This is similar to rates posted nationally during The Great Recession, an indication of just how badly the Hawaii jobs market has been damaged.

By contrast, April in Nebraska, New Hampshire, South Dakota and Utah had the lowest state rates at 2.8% each.

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Hawaii has faced two problems on the employment front. The first is that the tourism business has been savaged by the pandemic. By most estimates, tourism is the largest contributor to state GDP and the industry that employs the most people. Only government and healthcare contribute at nearly as high a level. The federal government effectively blocked air travel for months.

Second, the state has done an extraordinary job of protecting its population. Hawaii has had a surprisingly low number of deaths, even for its population size. However, the other side of this is that it has exacerbated the tourism trouble as travelers have been almost completely locked out of the state based on its measures to keep COVID-19 at bay. Federal restrictions have been strengthened by state restrictions.

Because travel may well remain low for the next several months, Hawaii’s job problem won’t go away.

Click here to see which city has the highest unemployment rate in America.
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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.