Last week’s unemployment claims were unchanged from the previous week, although they are still about 5% higher than a year ago. For all practical purposes claims have remained relatively flat over the last year reflecting, no doubt, the reluctance of businesses to lay off workers given the difficulty of finding persons to fill positions. Job openings are still elevated with a total of 9.61 million in August, yet they are 2.4 million fewer than a year ago when openings total was 12.0 million. Relative to the number of persons unemployed, the number of openings translates into 1.5 jobs available per unemployed person.
Despite no change in the number of U.S. claims this past week we find large differences among the fifty states. Changes over the last year in the number of claims at the state level range between a high in Virginia, where claims are 55% above their level early October 2022, to a low in Florida, where claims this year are 55% lower than last year.
The map to the right provides a geographic overview of changes in claims from last year. The red family of states indicates that claims this year are higher than in 2022; that is the employment situation in those states has worsened. Virginia, shown in gray leads states with highest increase in claims relative to last year. Second highest, in bright red, is New Hampshire with 50% more claims, followed by Hawaii which posts 45% more.
Visual inspection of the map suggests a greater preponderance of states with higher claims in the middle section of the country, as well as the Northwest region. Three states in the latter have higher claims - Montana, 19% higher, Washington, +21%, and Idaho +20%.
Conversely, the green family of states in the map indicates states with fewer claims than in October of 2022. Florida leads with the biggest improvement, as stated above, with claims this year slightly less than half their level last year- 55% below. Other improving states are Massachusetts which is down 42%, Indiana down 29% and Louisiana 17% lower. Note that improving states are generally among both coasts.
An alternative way to analyze the relative performance of states is to compare each state's number of claims to its total employment. That is, take the ratio of claims to employment and multiply by 1000, to convert the number into an easier to understand metric.
We find that at the national level with last week's 209,000 claims, against the 156.9 million persons employed, there are roughly 1.33 claims for every thousand persons employed. A lower ratio mean the state's employment performance is better, and conversely.
The map displays the latest ratio for all 50 states; the states in the family of reds post the relatively worst performance. States colored in the family of green indicate better performance.
The ratio ranges from a low of 0.33 in Virginia and 0.34 in South Dakota, to a high of 2.44 in Hawaii and 2.43 in Alaska. The median of all 50 states happens to be 1.0 and the average ratio is 1.22.
In the map, the two states in white, Wyoming and Nevada, have a ratio the same as the nation or roughly 1.33 claims per thousand workers employed.
Although one may be tempted to conclude that this metric captures the political divide between "blue" and "red" states, we can't conclude this without deeper analysis of the data. Yes, twelve of the thirteen states with higher than average ratio (red family) are all typically classified as leaning Democratic. At the same time, several states in the green family can be classified also as leaning Democratic. E.g., Virginia, Massachusetts, Rhode Island on the Northeast, or New Mexico and Colorado in the West.
