State Labor Markets in August 2024
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State labor markets were again soft in August. Texas, Indiana, Minnesota, and Wisconsin were the four states, while South Dakota saw a .7 percent decline. Numbers of other states had statistically insignificant drops. An interesting sidelight was that the original report that New York government employment had increased by an incredible 40,600 in July was revised to now show a 4,600 drop that month!
Six states, and DC, had statistically significant increases in their unemployment rates in August and one (again Connecticut) showed a decline. South Carolina’s rate increased by .4 percentage point. The highest unemployment rates were in DC (5.7%), Nevada (5.5%), California (5.3%), and Illinois (5.3%). No other state had rates as much as a point higher than the national 4.2%. Alabama, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia, and Wisconsin had rates of 3.0% or lower, with South Dakota at 2.0%.
Puerto Rico’s unemployment rate was again unchanged at 5.8%, while the island’s job count grew by 3,100.
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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