State Labor Markets in April 2022
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State payrolls were positive in April, with gains comparable to those in March. 11 states saw statistically significant increases from March, with New Hampshire’s 1.0 percent gain the largest. In absolute numbers Texas’s 62,800 increase was the largest. As was the case in the initial March estimates, over the last 12 months 49 states and the District Columbia had statistically significant increases in payroll employment. Delaware was the odd-man out, even though the April 2022 point estimate was more than 1 percent higher than the April 2021 figure). Aside from Delaware, Alabama, Kansas, and Wisconsin were the only states with gains less than 2 percent over that period. Nevada has seen an 8 percent rise, and the aggregate job increase in California was 925,000.
13 states and DC saw statistically significant drops in their unemployment rate in their unemployment rates in April, with Maryland’s .4 percentage point decline being the largest. The range of unemployment rates across the nation is no longer pronounced. Nebraska and Utah both have 1.9 percent rates; the highs are DC’s 5.8 and New Mexico’s 5.3.
Puerto Rico had another solid month, with a 4,700 gain in jobs and the unemployment rate ticking down to 6.4 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.
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