This City Has the Highest Unemployment in America

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Oct 11, 8:12AM EDT · Published Oct 9, 8:18AM EDT

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This City Has the Highest Unemployment in America — © David McNew / Getty Images News via Getty Images

In February 2020, unemployment was at a five-decade low of 3.5%. It rose to a five-decade high at 14.2% in April, driven by the sudden start of the COVID-19 pandemic. A rapid rise in gross domestic product and consumer confidence has helped fuel the comeback.

Fast forward to today. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has announced that the economy added 194,000 jobs in September. That was well below the 500,000 forecasts by economists. The national unemployment rate was 5.2%.

The BLS also provides unemployment data by state and metro area. In its Metropolitan Area Employment and Unemployment Summary, the bureau observed:

“Unemployment rates were lower in August than a year earlier in 385 of the 389 metropolitan areas, higher in 3 areas, and unchanged in 1 area, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. A total of 43 areas had jobless rates of less than 3.0 percent and 4 areas had rates of at least 10.0 percent. Nonfarm payroll employment increased over the year in 104 metropolitan areas and was essentially unchanged in 285 areas.”

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El Centro, California, had the highest rate at 19.4%. This contrasts to the city with the lowest rate, Lincoln, Nebraska, at 1.7%.

According to FRED, part of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, unemployment in El Centro has been extremely high for decades. In December 2010, the Great Recession drove its jobless level to over 30%. Since 1991, it has rarely been below 15%. El Centro city, at the center of the El Centro metropolitan statistical area, has a population of 44,079. Eighty-seven percent of the population is Hispanic or Latino. The household income is an unusually low $47,864.

The problem with El Centro shows the extent to which aid from the federal government has done little to reverse badly crippled local economies that have had nagging problems for years. Minority joblessness tends to be higher than White employment nationwide. The poverty this often causes lasts for several generations in families.

Click here to read This Is The State With The Highest Unemployment

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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.