WASHINGTON – Rhode Island edged out Michigan last month for the highest unemployment rate among the 50 states and District of Columbia, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. The nationwide rate last month was steady at 6.1 percent.
Rhode Island’s jobless rate rose 0.2 percentage points compared with August to 8.8 percent – the state’s highest level since September 1992, the R.I. Department of Labor and Training said in its monthly employment report (READ MORE) – while Michigan’s fell 0.2 percentage points to 8.7 percent.
Besides Michigan and Rhode Island, eight other states also had September jobless rates higher than 7 percent – Mississippi, 7.8 percent; California, 7.7 percent; Nevada and South Carolina, 7.3 percent each; and Kentucky, 7.1 percent – while North Carolina and the District of Columbia had rates of 7.0 percent, the BLS said.
The Ocean State also had the largest year-over-year increase in unemployment: a rise of 3.7 percentage points from September 2007’s 5.1 percent rate. Year-over-year increases of 1 percentage point or more also were seen in 24 other states and the District of Columbia – including Michigan, where unemployment rose 1.4 percentage points from the year-ago 7.3 percent – while another 12 states “had smaller, but also statistically significant, rate increases from September 2007,” the BLS said in yesterday’s report. Rates in three states were essentially unchanged, the bureau said. The other two states – Arkansas and Oklahoma – saw their rates fall compared with a year ago.
Meanwhile, non-farm payroll employment fell compared with August in 41 states and the District of Columbia, rising in the other nine states. Michigan was No. 1 in total jobs lost, shedding 28,300 positions last month alone, while on a percentage basis, Montana was No. 1, with a month-over-month decline of 1.5 percent.
Compared with a year ago, non-farm payroll employment shrank in 26 states, including Rhode Island, and rose in 24 states and the District of Columbia. And on a percentage basis, the BLS said, Rhode Island was the leader in year-over-year job losses, watching payrolls shrink 2.6 percent compared with their level in September 2007.
Additional information, including the 19-page Regional and State Employment and Unemployment report, is available from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics at www.bls.gov.
