Unemployment has dipped to nearly a 50-year low, indicating that a recession may not come. Millions of jobs in America have gone unfilled. However, some states are outliers and continue to have high jobless rates. (These cities will add the most jobs by 2060.)
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The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) recently released its State Employment and Unemployment report for March 2023. It showed national unemployment at 3.5%. While 11 states had jobless rate decreases from a year earlier, 10 had had increases and 29 saw little or no change.
Jobless figures in some states were at an all-time low since the BLS started to gather data. South Dakota had an unemployment figure of 1.9%. This means that only 9,187 people were out of work in the state in March. If the statistics include people who have left one job but will take another soon, the figure may be closer to zero.
According to the South Dakota News, “The South Dakota unemployment rate is down to 1.9 percent, which the governor (Kristi Noem) says is tied for the lowest rate of any state in American history.” Unemployment claims per 100,000 people were only one, according to WalletHub. In most states, the figure is over 20. In Massachusetts, with the highest rate, it is 51.
The low unemployment rate does create a problem. According to the Argus Leader, a Gannett paper, Dakota Institute stated, “There is a labor shortage, and it may be holding the state economy back from its growth potential. The labor shortage isn’t caused by people sitting on the sidelines, though. The labor shortage is a people shortage.” In other words, the economy is hurt because the population is so small.
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