Global| Mar 26 2021State Labor Markets in February
|in:Viewpoints
Summary
State labor markets were, in general, little-changed in February. Only 14 states reported statistically significant changes in payrolls—11 up, 3 down. The two eye-popping moves were the increases in California--141,000 (.9 [...]
State labor markets were, in general, little-changed in February. Only 14 states reported statistically significant changes in payrolls—11 up, 3 down. The two eye-popping moves were the increases in California--141,000 (.9 percent)--and Michigan 63,500 (1.6 percent). Both reflect outsized gains in leisure and hospitality. Most states saw improvements in this sector, in numbers of instances fairly large, but those two states stood ahead of the pack. In general, unemployment rates dropped in February (Connecticut, with a rise from 8.1 to 8.5 percent, was the only state that had a large statistically significant increase). Hawaii’s unemployment rate fell more than 1 percentage point to 9.2 percent. Hawaii continued to have the highest unemployment rate in the nation; New York’s 8.9 percent was second. Unemployment rates were under 5 percent in Northern New England, the plains, and much of the Mountain West, Rocky Mountains, and Southeast, along with a number of other states. Higher unemployment rate states were in the West and Northeast.
Puerto Rican numbers were comparable to those on the mainland—little change in payrolls or unemployment.
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.