Unemployment Rates by State - Low and High Unemployment Rate States

13 states have unemployment levels at 3% or less

On an ongoing basis, Janco analyzes the unemployment rates reported by the BLS. This is included in the firm's analysis of the projected number of jobs that will be added or deleted from the IT profession. The National unemployment data provides a measure of the health of the overall labor market. A more granular metric is one that considers local conditions - i.e. state and local unemployment.

The IT Unemployment rate in the past several months has exceeded the US national unemployment rate - That is a bad omen for the IT Job Market in general. This impact can be seen in both the computer hardware and software markets in falling sales. There currently are over 71,000 unemployed IT Professionals. Read on...

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Long Term Trend - IT Job Market versus state by state unemployment rate

Employment of IT professionals traditionally is tied to the national unemployment rates. In our research we have found that the number of IT jobs created or lost is tied to the number of states that are at full employment (3.0% or less) versus those with high unemployment rates (5.0% or higher). In December there was one state (Nevada 5.2%) that had a high unemployment rate.

IT hiring improves as with a unemployment rate of 2.7% versus a national unemployment rate at 4.1%

First signs of a poor employment picture are appearing in the IT job market - Demand still high for experienced CIOs and CTOs in large enterprises

High Unemployment States

The highest unemployment states are those that have an overall unemployment rate of 4.5% or higher. In March there were four states (Delaware 5.7%, Nevada 5.5%, California 5.3%, and Idaho (5.3%) that had an unemployment rate of over 5%. There were eleven (11) states that had an unemployment rate of over 4.5%. That is up by 4 from last month. Included are Michigan and Ohio both at 4.5%.

All of the states with unemployment rates of 4.5% or above had unemployment rates that were worse than last year at this same time. Not a very good sign.

States with the Lowest Unemployment -- Full Employment States

At the start of the shutdown, there were 19 states with unemployment rates of less than 3.0%.

In March of this year, there were 16 states at full employment levels.

In September the number of full employment states dropped from 14 to 13 states - eight (8) of these states had an increase and one (1) saw a decrease in the unemployment rate from the prior month

Latest data

All of the states that were at full employment levels have been there for 3 months with limited improvement. However, ten of these states had unemployment rates higher than the same same month last year.

In summary, the employment picture for IT Pros is mixed. Some growth can be expected, for selected skills.