Unemployment Rates by State - Low and High Unemployment Rate States

14 states have unemployment levels at 3% or less - 6 of these states had an increase in the unemployment rate from the prior month

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.

Between California and New York alone, almost 3 million jobs were lost during the Covid shutdowns.

CIO Hiring Trends
Information Technology National Unemployment Rate

The IT Unemployment rate in the months of August thru November exeeded 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 121,000 unemployed IT Professionals. Read on...

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 slows as national unemployment rate at 3.7%

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

IT job market and full employment states

High Unemployment States

The highest unemployment states are those that have an overall unemployment rate of 4.5% or higher. In June there were three states (Nevada 5.4%, California 5.1% and Deleware 5.1%) that had an unemployment rate over 5%. In January, the unemployment rate in California moved up from 5.1% to 5.2%. These are preliminary indicators that the employment picture for IT Pros is not as rosey as it has been. There were eight states that fell into this category.

High unemployment states Current Year versus prior year

All eight of the states had uneployment rates that were worse than last year at this same time.

High unemployment states Current Month vs prior Month

States with the Lowest Unemployment -- Full Employment States

State unemployment rates are starting to show a degradation in the unemployment rate. At the start of the shutdown, there were 15 states with unemployment rates of less than 3.0%.

In November there were 17 states at full employment levels.

14 states are at full employment - 2 of these states had an increase in the unemployment rate from the prior month

Full employment states
Latest data

All of the states that were at full employment levels have been there for 3 months with limited improvement.

Full employment states Current Year versus prior year