The Bureau of Labor Statistics released today gives new insight into employment numbers, state by state, for the month of June.
Compared to the month before, unemployment has increased in 27 states. Meanwhile, 11 states, as well as the District of Columbia, reported a decrease in unemployment in June compared to May. 12 other states reported no change.
Looking more long-term, 47 states have reported a decrease in unemployment rates when compared to a year ago. The report is bad news for New York, as the state is one of three to report increases in unemployment rates for the year-to-date.
California did the best at improving employment this month with an addition of 38,300 jobs. Other good performers in terms of June employment figures were Ohio, with an increase of 18,400, and North Carolina with 16,900 new jobs. Unfortunately, Wisconsin lost the most jobs in the past month, 13,200 jobs. Tennessee with a loss of 12,100 and Maryland with 11,000 fewer posts, followed.
Percentages of unemployment rates and addition of jobs can be two very different things, when you take population size and larger states with larger cities into considerations. Alaska experienced the largest over the month employment increase, by a full 1%. South Dakota and North Dakota followed closely with 0.7% and 0.6% in employment increases, respectively. New Mexico, Vermont and Wisconsin all saw a 0.5% decrease in employment over the month, which is the largest compared to other states.
Regionally the Western states are worse off compared to the rest of the United States, with a regional unemployment rate of 9.4%. The Midwest reported the lowest unemployment rate again with a 7.3%. The Northeast was the only region to experience an over the month change, with a 0.2% increase in unemployment. Year to date changes are down 1.2% in the Midwest and South, and down 1.1% in the west.
On a national scale, unemployment is at 8.2%. That is the same it was in May of this year, but 0.9% lower than in June 2011.
