The American City With the Most People Out of Work

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published May 6, 10:04AM EDT

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The American City With the Most People Out of Work — © jmoor17 / iStock Unreleased via Getty Images

If jobs are the primary measure of the strength of the American economy, the economy is colossally strong. In May, America added another 253,000 jobs, keeping up a string of muscular job reports that goes back over a year. The unemployment rate is 3.4%, nearly the lowest in five decades.

Some economists believe the jobs numbers are the calm before the storm. The more people have jobs, the more pressure there is on the daily prices of goods and services. That means inflation. Inflation triggers higher interest rates. Higher interest rates slow the economy. A slowing economy means layoffs. Each month experts say this string of events is just around the corner. Every month it is not.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks unemployment rates for cities and states. The data usually lags the national figure by a few weeks. The March data showed that the jobless rate was lower, than a year earlier in 208 of the 389 metropolitan areas, higher in 151 areas, and unchanged in 30 areas,

There was a considerable difference from city to city, compared to the national number. In March, Decatur, AL; Huntsville, AL; and Rapid City, SD, had the lowest unemployment rates, 1.6% each.

The city with the highest unemployment rate was El Centro, California, at 15.6%, over four times the national average. The labor force in the city was 71,396. The number of people out of work was 11,46. The next highest rates were in Visalia-Porterville, CA at 11.3%, and Merced, CA, 11.2%.

El Centro is on the Mexican border, across from Mexicali. One reason for the high jobless rate is that the economy is dominated by agriculture, the employment of which is seasonal. High levels of drought have not helped.

The factors that make the El Centro jobless rates high will not go away, so the number will not change much going forward.

Also read: states with the highest unemployment

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.