Global| Nov 19 2019State Labor Markets in October
|in:Viewpoints
Summary
Reflecting the relatively muted national increase, in general, states saw little change in payroll employment in October. Only 4 states (Texas, Maryland, Utah, and Nebraska) reported statistically significant gains. Michigan reported [...]
Reflecting the relatively muted national increase, in general, states saw little change in payroll employment in October. Only 4 states (Texas, Maryland, Utah, and Nebraska) reported statistically significant gains. Michigan reported a substantial, and statistically significant, decline, obviously mainly or totally reflecting the General Motors strike. 15 other states reported a statistically insignificant drop, or no change, in payrolls—this is a smaller group than the 22 that reported point declines in the initial release of the September figures. Over the past 12 months all states except Michigan and North Dakota (Michigan was down; North Dakota was unchanged) registered some increase in their job counts (including DC in this group), though only 27 of these were statistically significant. Utah was again the leader, with a 3.2 percent rise over this period. Once again, Western states were typically the leaders in job growth, though Florida's 2.6 percent gain ranked second. 24 states (again viewing DC as a state) had increases of 1.0 percent or less over the last 12 months, a smaller number than we had been seeing, suggesting some cooling-off in the pace of job growth in much of the country. Aside from Alaska and Hawaii, the softer growth areas tended to be in the Middle West, the lower Mississippi Valley, and the Northeast.
In the household survey figures Alaska's unchanged 6.2 percent unemployment rate continued to be the highest in the nation, and Mississippi's rate remained above 5 percent. Vermont's 2.2 percent rate—also unchanged from September—was again the national low.
Puerto Rico had a discouraging month, with the island's unemployment rate edging up from 7.6 to 7.7 percent, despite a drop the labor force, and the number of jobs down 1.800.
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.