Global| May 22 2020State Labor Markets in April
|in:Viewpoints
Summary
The debacle was complete. All 50 states (and DC) experienced statistically significant declines in payroll employment and statistically significant increases in their unemployment rate in April. 43 states saw new record highs in [...]
The debacle was complete. All 50 states (and DC) experienced statistically significant declines in payroll employment and statistically significant increases in their unemployment rate in April. 43 states saw new record highs in unemployment, based on the current series (starting in 1976). Nevada was highest, with a truly staggering 28.2 percent figure. Michigan and Hawaii also had rates above 20 percent. Seven states report rates under 10 percent; Connecticut's 7.9 percent was the lowest. However, with a 7.4 percent drop in its labor force the Nutmeg State really doesn't have much to boost about.
On the job side, Michigan's count fell more than 20 percent. California, New York, Texas, and Florida all shed more than 1 million jobs. The rate of decline was Oklahoma's 7.8 percent; nine other states experienced losses less than 10 percent.
A sharp drop in government employment was noted in the national data. The experience of states varied substantially. Hawaii and Wisconsin shed more than 10 percent of their government jobs, but numbers of other states had losses of less than 3 percent. Leisure and hospitality, of course, fell greatly everywhere. Unsurprisingly, some of the most severely locked-down states, such as Washington, New York, and New Jersey, lost more than half their jobs in this sector (as did Hawaii and few other states—surprisingly, Florida and Nevada were not in this group).
For a second straight month BLS was unable to compile household survey figures for Puerto Rico. The island's job count fell by more than 10 percent.
Charles Steindel
AuthorMore in Author Profile »Charles Steindel has been editor of Business Economics, the journal of the National Association for Business Economics, since 2016. From 2014 to 2021 he was Resident Scholar at the Anisfield School of Business, Ramapo College of New Jersey. From 2010 to 2014 he was the first Chief Economist of the New Jersey Department of the Treasury, with responsibilities for economic and revenue projections and analysis of state economic policy. He came to the Treasury after a long career at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where he played a major role in forecasting and policy advice and rose to the rank of Senior Vice-President. He has served in leadership positions in a number of professional organizations. In 2011 he received the William F. Butler Award from the New York Association for Business Economics, is a fellow of NABE and of the Money Marketeers of New York University, and has received several awards for articles published in Business Economics. In 2017 he delivered Ramapo College's Sebastian J. Raciti Memorial Lecture. He is a member of the panel for the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia's Survey of Professional Forecasters and of the Committee on Research in Income and Wealth. He has published papers in a range of areas, and is the author of Economic Indicators for Professionals: Putting the Statistics into Perspective. He received his bachelor's degree from Emory University, his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and is a National Association for Business Economics Certified Business EconomistTM.