States Whose Unemployment Rates Are Bouncing Back Most

From Wallet Hub,  Jul 17, 2020

June’s jobs report brought encouraging news for the employment market, as the economy added 4.8 million nonfarm payroll jobs. That’s nearly double the amount added in May. Now, the U.S. unemployment rate sits at 11.1%, which is still high but is a decline from the nearly historic high of 14.7% at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. This drop can be attributed to the fact that all U.S. states have reopened at least some non-essential businesses. In addition, most people who became unemployed during this crisis have only been temporarily laid off, and expect to be rehired by their former employers once companies reopen and start to make money again. However, it will take far more time for us to reduce the unemployment rate to pre-pandemic levels than it did for the virus to reverse over a decade of job growth.

In order to identify the states whose unemployment rates are bouncing back most, WalletHub compared the 50 states and the District of Columbia based on four key metrics. They looked at the change in each state’s unemployment rate during the latest month for which they have data (June 2020) compared to June 2019 and January 2020. They also compared not seasonally adjusted continued claims in June 2020 to June 2019. Finally, they considered each state’s overall unemployment rate. This monthly report is a companion to “States Whose Unemployment Claims Are Recovering the Quickest”, which examines unemployment claims on a weekly basis.

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