Global| Jun 21 2019State Labor Markets in May
|in:Viewpoints
Summary
The May job numbers from the states were comparable to the national figure, showing little change in payrolls. Washington was the only state to have a statistically significant change--an increase of 9,500. Texas, California, and [...]
The May job numbers from the states were comparable to the national figure, showing little change in payrolls. Washington was the only state to have a statistically significant change--an increase of 9,500. Texas, California, and Florida all reported point increases larger than Washington, but none were statistically significant, nor was New York’s drop of nearly 14,000 deemed to be of statistical note. Over the 12 months ending in May, Nevada was in a league of its own, with an astonishing 4.0% increase in jobs—no other state showed growth as high as 3 percent. No state (including DC) reported a decline in jobs over this period, but it may be of note that in fewer than half the states was the rise seen as statistically significant—for instance, Massachusetts, which has generally been seen as one of the strongest states in the Northeast, was not viewed as having a statistically significant rise in jobs from May 2018 to Mary 2019.
Unemployment rates were generally low and fairly uniform across the nation. Alaska was again the outlier on the high side, but its May rate of 6.4% continues a steady decline. DC, at 5.7%, and Mississippi and New Mexico, at 5.0%, were the other high side outliers. Vermont was again the state with the lowest unemployment rate, with the May figure an astonishing 2.1%. More than forty states—including the four largest—report unemployment rates between 2.5 and 4.5%.
Puerto Rico’s travails continued in May. While the island’s May unemployment rate of 8.5% (up a notch from April) was low by historic standards, the number of jobs edged down, and remain below the pre-Maria figure and even further under the historic peak.
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.